As the world becomes more interconnected, an increasing number of employers are looking into potential employees' social media when making hiring decisions. I will show in this essay how these practices can violate federal law and leave companies open to litigation.
With the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, employers could no longer legally discriminate based on protected classes such as race, color, religion, sex, or national origin (Title VI). Hiring processes changed to comply with the new law. These changes include removing race and national origin from applications. Despite these changes, the advent of social media has increased employers' access to employees' personal information, allowing social media to be used as a cover for discriminatory practices such as in the Watson v. Philadelphia Parking Auth. case. The sand is a sand. Mr Watson was reprimanded multiple…show more content… While Mr. Wastson was being reprimanded the first time, he was told that black men are held to a higher standard and that heterosexual employees seeing his social media posts would consider him a “sexual predator”. His employment ended after eight days with the company. Although the official cause was for violating the employer's social media policy, Mr Watson sued believing that his race and sexuality were the true causes. As the national discussion moves towards increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion within companies, this has created an ongoing challenge of reaching diverse candidates Companies have attempted to utilize social media to reach a more diverse applicant pool. This creates a conflict with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and has resulted in lawsuits such as McCarrick v. Amazon.com Services LLC. Ms McCarrick alleged that she
