Justice Department Settles with Staffing Company re Illegal Citizenship Requirement

DOJ, Sept. 7, 2016- "The Justice Department reached an agreement today with Cumberland Staffing Inc., doing business as AtWork Cumberland Staffing (ACS), to resolve the department’s investigation into whether the company discriminated against work-authorized immigrants and naturalized U.S. citizens in violation of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). ACS is a temporary staffing agency with an office located in Cookeville, Tennessee.

The department initiated its investigation after a Tennessee resident notified the department of an ACS job posting that included a U.S. birth certificate requirement. The department’s investigation found that between December 2015 and February 2016, ACS’s Cookeville office created and published a job posting stating that applicants for machine operator positions at a client company must present a U.S. birth certificate, even though there was no legal authorization for such requirement. The discriminatory posting was published on several job search engine websites during this time period.

The INA’s anti-discrimination provision prohibits employers from discriminating in hiring, recruiting or referring for a fee based on a person’s citizenship, immigration status or national origin. In the absence of a legal basis to do so (such as a law, regulation or government contract that requires U.S. citizenship restrictions), employers, recruiters and referrers for a fee may not limit job opportunities or otherwise impose barriers to obtaining employment based on an individual’s citizenship, immigration status or national origin. By requiring a U.S. birth certificate – a document that only non-naturalized U.S. citizens possess – to be considered for an employment opportunity, ACS’s job posting created a discriminatory barrier for work-authorized individuals, such as naturalized U.S. citizens, U.S. nationals, lawful permanent residents, asylees and refugees.

Under the settlement agreement, ACS will pay a civil penalty, remove all specific document requirements from its job postings except where required by law, train staff on proper employment verification and reverification procedures and ensure that trained staff or legal counsel review future job advertisements."