What started as one man’s frustrating job search has now grown into one of the most closely watched AI-related discrimination cases in the United States. Mobley, an African American professional over 40 with a disability, lost his IT job around 2017. He later described dealing with anxiety and depression while trying to get back into work.
A Morehouse College graduate with a finance degree, he had experience across IT, finance, and customer service. Like many job seekers, he turned to online job platforms.
What followed was more than 100 applications, some reports say over 150, sent through companies using Workday hiring systems. Every single application came back as a rejection. Many came back almost immediately, sometimes within minutes, even in the middle of the night.
Hundreds of applications, no replies
After losing his job, Mobley did what many people do: he started applying everywhere he could. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, he claimed to have sent out more than 158 job applications. “Terrible. I mean, financial stress. Emotional stress. I just kept getting a lot of no’s. It was just rejection, after rejection, after rejection.”
For months, nothing changed. But then one night, something felt off. He got a rejection email at a very odd time, around 1:30 in the morning on a weekend. “One day I was looking at my phone and I got an email and it was at a very odd time of the day… 1:30 in the morning, and it was on a weekend,” he told WSJ.
And that made him stop and think. “Who’s actually looking at my resume or my application at that time of day and that time of the weekend?” That moment changed how he saw everything. “That basically was the watershed moment… I started thinking, this is not a human.” “This is a bot.”
Mobley began to suspect that automated systems were screening his applications instead of people. These systems are used widely in hiring today. One of the biggest is Workday, which helps companies manage job applications, resumes, and candidate screening. Many large companies use it, which means job seekers often interact with it without even realising it.
Over time, Mobley kept applying for jobs he believed he was qualified for, sometimes overqualified. “I’m smelling the smoke, not necessarily seeing the fire, but I’m definitely smelling the smoke,” he recalled, describing his suspicion that something in the system was working against him.
The case he took to court – Mobley v. Workday, Inc.
In February 2023, Mobley filed a lawsuit in federal court in California titled Mobley v. Workday, Inc. He accused the company of allowing its AI-based hiring tools to unfairly block applicants like him.
His case includes claims under laws covering age discrimination, race discrimination, and disability rights. The core of the case is “disparate impact,” meaning the system may be producing unfair outcomes even if no one intended discrimination.
One key argument in his complaint, according to Miami Law Review, said, “Algorithmic decision-making and data analytics are not, and should not be assumed to be, race neutral, disability neutral, or age neutral.”
He also argued that Workday’s system acted like an “agent” for employers, since it was involved in recommending or rejecting candidates. Defending itself, Workday said it is only a software provider and does not make hiring decisions itself.
What the court has said so far
In July 2024, Judge Rita Lin rejected Workday’s attempt to end the case early. She said Mobley’s claims were strong enough to continue, including the idea that the platform could be acting as an “agent” in hiring decisions.
The court also observed that Mobley had plausibly shown the system was involved in decision-making by pushing some candidates forward and rejecting others.
The case is now in the discovery phase, where both sides are collecting and exchanging evidence. In February 2026, the court also allowed it to move ahead as a nationwide collective action.
There have been partial wins for both sides so far. Judge Lin said that job applicants can bring claims under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), and also noted that AI hiring platforms like Workday could, in some situations, be treated as acting like an “agent” of employers.
At the same time, Workday also managed to get some claims dismissed. Certain individual state-level allegations and disability-related claims did not move forward.