The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division began investigating Arthur Grand Technologies in May that year. The company must now pay a $7,500 civil penalty to the U.S. Treasury Department and $31,000 in compensation to people who filed federal complaints about the job posting, according to the news release.
“It is shameful that in the 21st century, we continue to see employers using ‘whites only’ and ‘only US born’ job postings to lock out otherwise eligible job candidates of color,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke with Justice’s Civil Rights Division said in the release.
Arthur Grand Technologies did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday afternoon. CEO Sheik Rahmathullah told CNN that the company “vehemently denies any guilt or wrongdoing in relation to the discriminatory job posting.”
The hiring advertisement was an unauthorized posting “made by an upset employee on a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) from their personal email address and account,” Rahmathullah told CNN. “Upon discovering this, we took immediate and decisive action to ensure that this type of incident will never happen again, including the immediate termination of the responsible employee.”
Arthur Grand, which is based in Ashburn, Va., and also lists office addresses in Canada and India, provides IT services to customers including the federal government, according to its website.
The company’s March 2023 job posting was recruiting for a contract business analyst position based in Dallas that would serve two commercial clients in Michigan and Nebraska, according to the Justice Department and an archived post of the job listing.
Screenshots of the job posting and its “only Born US Citizens [White]” requirement were shared to Reddit and LinkedIn and quickly prompted angry comments that the requirements were illegal.
Arthur Grand initially responded by saying that “a new junior recruiter at our firm was responsible for the offending job posting,” WFAA reported in April 2023. The company then released a second statement saying the posting was “was neither authorized nor posted by Arthur Grand or its employees.”
“A former employee took an existing posting and added discriminatory language, then reposted it through his own account,” the company said in its statement, according to the station. It also denied that it discriminated against applicants and said it prided itself on its diversity, WFAA reported. The job listing was taken down.
The Justice Department found in an investigation that a recruiter working for Arthur Grand’s subsidiary in India posted the job advertisement, according to the news release.
Arthur Grand signed a settlement agreement with the Justice Department and the U.S. Labor Department resolving that it violated the Immigration and Nationality Act and an executive order that forbids federal contractors from discriminating in employment based on race or nationality.
Besides the monetary penalties, Arthur Grand will also provide workplace training on federal discrimination laws, revise its employment policies and be subject to Justice Department monitoring.
