Hundreds of employers, including Amazon.com Inc., T-Mobile US Inc. and Cox Communications Inc., discriminated against older workers by targeting advertisements to a specific age range through Facebook's paid platform, a federal class action filed on Wednesday said.

The Communications Workers of America and three recently unemployed workers, represented by the law firm Outten & Golden, filed the suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. The complaint alleged job ads and opportunities are hidden from older workers through Facebook's advertising platform. Facebook is not a named defendant.

The suit claims that by targeting employment ads to younger workers—in age ranges of 18 to 40, or 22 to 45, for instance—employers are violating laws that prohibit discrimination in employment advertising, recruiting and hiring.

The lawsuit includes examples, as exhibits, that show certain advertisements target ads to users by age and geography. One ad shows a notice of part-time work in Maryland, targeted specifically to the 18-54 age range and location in Silver Spring.

An exhibit included in the lawsuit filed Wednesday that alleged age discrimination.
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“In decades as a civil rights lawyer, I have never seen job ads like these that expressly target young workers and exclude older workers,” said David Lopez of Outten & Golden, formerly general counsel to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. “The law requires equal opportunity in advertising, recruiting and hiring.”

T-Mobile, a named defendant in the case, and the lawsuit claims its employment ads state the company, “wants to reach people ages 18 to 38.” Amazon ads sought ages “22 to 40” and Cox “ages 20 to 45.”

T-Mobile declined a request for comment. Other companies named as defendants did not respond to requests for comment from The Recorder.

In a statement to The New York Times and ProPublica, Facebook defended its advertising practices. “Used responsibly, age-based targeting for employment purposes is an accepted industry practice and for good reason: it helps employers recruit and people of all ages find work,” said Rob Goldman, a Facebook vice president.

An Amazon spokesman said: “We have a longstanding practice of not commenting on pending litigation. However, we recently audited our recruiting ads on Facebook and discovered some had targeting that was inconsistent with our approach of searching for any candidate over the age of 18. We have corrected those ads.”

Lura Callahan, 67, Linda Maxwell Bradley, 45, and Maurice Anscombe, 57, are named plaintiffs in the lawsuit. All three are recently unemployed and use Facebook and other sites to search for work, according to the lawsuit.

The Facebook advertising platform was targeted in a lawsuit brought by Outten & Golden and other firms. The lawsuit, pending in California federal court, argued that the tool illegally enabled housing and employment ads from receiving certain groups, including African-Americans, Latinos and Asian-Americans by giving companies the option of choosing its demographic.

The suit filed Wednesday on behalf of older workers seeks an injunction against the companies and other large employers from engaging in the practice and requires defendants to compensate older workers denied opportunities.

“It's illegal and immoral to exclude older workers from receiving a company's job ads,” said Peter Romer-Friedman of Outten & Golden. “This harmful practice must stop today. We are hopeful that this class action will end systemic age discrimination in online job recruiting.”

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