General Motors discrimination lawsuit settled: Feds slap automaker with $365K fine
General Motors will pay a $365,000 fine under a settlement announced Tuesday in which the U.S. Justice Department concluded the automaker discriminated against certain immigrants by requiring they show an unexpired foreign passport as a condition of being hired.
Under the terms of the settlement, GM – which acknowledged no wrongdoing – also has to revise its employment policies and train personnel on the requirements and prohibitions of hiring under the Immigration and Nationality Act.
"We welcome this resolution as an opportunity both to avoid litigation and to refine and clarify our internal administrative processes to further improve the employee experience,” GM spokeswoman Maria Raynal said in an email to the Free Press.
The Justice Department said that for some period prior to September 2021, GM, under its guidelines for meeting federal rules regarding the export or sharing of certain products, technology and technical data with anyone considered a "non-U.S. person," required lawful permanent residents, otherwise known as green-card holders, to show an unexpired foreign passport to be hired.
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By doing so, the department said GM imposed "a discriminatory barrier" on those job candidates, improperly combining verification of employment documentation with export compliance and "unnecessarily requiring that newly hired non-U.S. citizens provide specific and unnecessary documents to prove their permission to work."
Under the law, the department said, U.S. persons don't only include U.S. citizens but U.S. nationals, lawful permanent residents, refugees and asylees. Non-U.S. persons are those who are present in the country but do not meet those other definitions. The Justice Department also issued new guidance to companies on how to avoid discrimination while complying with export control laws.
GM said it fully cooperated throughout the investigation and noted that no formal determination of discrimination was reached.
Raynal said GM takes pride in its diverse global workforce and is committed to employment that is “free of discrimination, including based on citizenship, immigration status and national origin.” She also said the company appreciated the Justice Department addressing a "longstanding need for guidance to help well-intentioned employers navigate the tension between export control obligations on the one hand and employment eligibility verification compliance obligations on the other hand."
Contact Todd Spangler: tspangler@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter@tsspangler.