Popular Culture Review Volume 30, Number 1, Winter 2019 | Page 188

Popular Culture Review 30.1
resulted in the loss of a disproportionate amount of African-American candidates . This leads the company to discover that most of the African-American candidates lived in the outlying suburbs of the area . By trying to exclude employees most likely to be late , or miss work due to traffic or transportation problems , this variable had , in effect , excluded a large amount of African-American applicants .
Algorithmic hiring practices , while continuing to prove their time and cost savings to human resource managers across the country , carry with them an ever increasing legal risk . In the past , the benefits of “ Big Data ” have proved invaluable , but potential legal challenges and regulatory changes may be forthcoming . As technology advances , the disparate impact of current algorithmic hiring based on the past discriminatory hiring practices is going to be easier to prove at times when companies may be under greater scrutiny from the EEOC . The real-world risk of disparate impact have been called into scrutiny by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ( EEOC ) and , in a recent open meeting , were discussed at length . Finally , the EEOC stands ready to step into the issue . On October 13 , the EEOC held a meeting titled “ Big Data in the Workplace : Examining Implications for Equal Employment Opportunity Law .” The insights from the speakers , experts in their field , as they present their view on this topic to the EEOC allows us a glimpse of the direct information presented to the Commission . The EEOC ’ s examination of the problems of algorithmic hiring indicates that guidance on these issues might be coming .
If a disparate impact claim based around algorithmic hiring to reach the Supreme Court , it is difficult to predict how such a claim would be resolved . Traditionally , the Court has offered “ Chevron Deference ” to the interpretations of regu-
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