Lawsuit claims Clearview AI fired employees for being too old
Two former employees of Clearview AI are suing the facial recognition company for age-based discrimination.
The plaintiffs, Mark Crowl and David Edgar, both worked as sales directors who shopped the company’s products to law enforcement at the state and local level. Crowl, 62, and Edgar, 55, say in their complaint (via Bloomberg Law) that they were unlawfully terminated for being perceived as too old for the job, and that Clearview “offered purely pretextual reasons for the terminations meant to conceal their discriminatory animus.”
The filing claims that Abhinav Somani, who was hired as Clearview’s COO in October 2021, implemented a “discriminatory campaign to terminate older sales employees in order to create a younger sales force,” which the company “took tangible steps to implement,” including firing the plaintiffs. The campaign allegedly targeted employees over forty years of age.
The plaintiffs maintain they were not let go because of their performance records, which were generally successful, and that they received termination letters stating as much. They also say Clearview CEO Hoan Ton-That offered them personal plaudits during the call on which he also told them they were losing their jobs in a reorganization.
“Days after the firings and the company’s statements about a supposed reorganization purportedly eliminating State and Local Sales,” reads the complaint, “Defendants publicly posted multiple job listings for the same positions” held by Edgar and Crowl.
“The accounts previously handled by Plaintiffs are now being managed by younger, less qualified, and newly hired employees.”
“This lawsuit is without merit and we will defend against these baseless claims,” comments Jack Mulcaire, general counsel for Clearview AI, in a statement emailed to Biometric Update.
Clearview has been aggressively expanding its partnerships with law enforcement and governments, filing for patents, and making new appointments that suggest a focus on military and intelligence markets. This week, the Department of Homeland Security announced it was using Clearview’s biometric tools to crack child sex offender cases that had gone cold.
However, the age discrimination suit will not look good for a biometrics firm working in law enforcement, with the sector presently facing questions about whether facial recognition tools enable discriminatory policing practices.
this post was updated at 9:20am Eastern on August 11, 2023 to include comment from Clearview AI.
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