Former Amazon employee files lawsuit, claims company asked her to racially profile job applicants

By

Gabriella Lacombe

Published
Feb 27, 2020

A former manager at Amazon is suing the company after she claims she was fired for refusing to follow orders to racially profile job applicants.

Lisa McCarrick, who was working as a regional loss prevention manager for Amazon, filed a wrongful termination lawsuit against the company on February 25 in California, after she was terminated in November. 

The suit, originally reported on by Bloomberg, claims that McCarrick was let go after she complained to higher-ups that her supervisor told her to look through the social media accounts of prospective hires to determine their race and gender. According to the suit, she believed this was unlawful. 

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At the meeting where McCarrick was informed that she was being let go, the report continued, "it was communicated to her that her direct supervisor had admitted to utilizing social media accounts for the the purpose of ascertaining race and ethnicity.” However, the supervisor was not identified and the purpose of this research, or whether it would be used to influence the hiring process, was not disclosed. 

McCarrick claimed that she had earned positive job evaluations throughout her 16-month tenure at the company. 

Amazon has faced multiple previous accusations of discrimination, including several individual lawsuits that claimed the company discriminated against Muslim employees, pregnant employees, a transgender employee and her husband,  and black and Latinx drivers. In addition, 2018 the company was found to be using an AI recruiting tool that discriminated against women. 

FashionNetwork.com reached out to Amazon, and received the following comment: 

"At our core, we fundamentally believe that diversity, inclusion, equality, and equal pay for equal work are not just good for our teams and our business, it's just simply right. While we cannot comment on the specifics of this ongoing legal proceeding, Ms. McCarrick's allegations are just not accurate.”