The EEOC has sued a Texas-based IT staffing agency, alleging a recruiter’s “ONLY H-1B” email led the agency to refuse to refer an American applicant for a job in Mountain View, California.
What happened
The agency announced the suit on September 30. According to the EEOC’s complaint, in July 2025 a recruiter contacted an American database developer by email about a business data analyst position and included the notice “ONLY H-1B” in large, highlighted text. When the developer questioned the legality of a visa requirement for the role, the recruiter stopped communicating and did not refer him. The suit says the agency then referred two candidates of Indian and Nepali origin for the same position.
The EEOC says the alleged conduct violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment agencies from discriminating on the basis of national origin. It filed the case in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California after trying to reach a settlement through conciliation. The allegations have not been decided by a court.
Why it matters
EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas said that “Employers and employment agencies cannot shut qualified Americans out of job opportunities by using unjustified visa requirements as a proxy for national origin discrimination.” The agency also said it is partnering with the Department of Labor in Project Firewall.
Our read
The alleged violation sits in a few words of outreach copy. Recruiter email templates, sourcing sequences and job-posting fields are where phrases like a visa-status limit tend to live, and an AI sourcing tool that drafts outreach inherits whatever language it is given. HR teams that use outside agencies can run a short check: search templates and live postings for visa-status wording, and ask every agency in writing how it handles candidates who question a requirement. The same enforcement logic runs through the EEOC’s recent national-origin settlement over remote work, and the agency’s position that there is no AI exception in employment law applies to automated outreach as much as to screening.
