iTutorGroup pays $365,000 after EEOC alleges its application software auto-rejected 200+ older applicants — the settlement the EEOC's Chair tied to its AI enforcement push

The problem

iTutorGroup — three integrated companies providing English-language tutoring to students in China under one brand — hired thousands of US-based tutors through an online application system that collected applicants’ birthdates. According to the EEOC’s federal-court complaint (filed 5 May 2022, E.D.N.Y.), in 2020 the companies “programmed their application software to automatically reject female applicants over the age of 55 and male applicants over the age of 60.”

What the regulator alleged

Per the complaint, the rule ran exactly as written: “On or about March 29, 2020, Charging Party applied using her real birthdate and was immediately rejected because she was over the age of 55.” In late March and early April 2020, the EEOC alleged, the defendants failed to hire charging party Wendy Pincus “and more than 200 other qualified applicants age 55 and older from the United” States because of their age — conduct the agency said violates the Age Discrimination in Employment Act. EEOC Chair Charlotte A. Burrows, announcing the suit: “Age discrimination is unjust and unlawful. Even when technology automates the discrimination, the employer is still responsible” — adding, “This case is an example of why the EEOC recently launched an Artificial Intelligence and Algorithmic Fairness Initiative.”

The defendants denied the allegations in their entirety, denied any wrongdoing, and disputed that the tutors were “employees” under the ADEA rather than independent contractors. No allegation was adjudicated at trial.

The outcome

The case settled by consent decree, jointly executed and filed 9 August 2023 (Doc 24-1). Its terms: the defendants pay “the total gross sum of $365,000” into a segregated Qualified Settlement Fund within 21 days of the decree’s effective date, distributed among the tutor applicants allegedly rejected because of age in March and April 2020. The decree also enjoins age- and sex-based discrimination against US-based tutoring applicants, bans requesting applicants’ birth dates, requires anti-discrimination training and policies, and gives the EEOC monitoring and periodic complaint reports. It “remains in effect for five (5) years from its effective date” or three years from any resumption of US-based tutoring. The EEOC announced the settlement on 11 September 2023: “The decree settling the suit provides $365,000 to be distributed to applicants who were automatically rejected due to age.”

The label caveat, stated plainly: press and law-firm coverage calls this the EEOC’s first “AI hiring discrimination” settlement. The filings support less: the complaint and decree never mention artificial intelligence or machine learning — the operative allegation is a programmed age rule in application software. As Seyfarth’s legal update put it, “automatically rejecting older job applicants, when their birthdates are already known, does not require any sort of artificial intelligence or machine learning.” The AI framing is the EEOC’s own — but at the initiative level (Chair Burrows’s statement), not in the pleadings. This story claims automated screening, and attributes the AI label to whom it belongs.

Path to green

There is no deployer client to call: this is a regulator honest-negative, and every critical figure sits in signed public artifacts of an independent federal agency and a jointly executed court filing. The $365,000, the 55/60 rule, and the 200+ applicant count are quoted verbatim from the filed complaint, the consent decree, and two EEOC releases, each with CDX-confirmed archives (the two court PDFs digest-tied byte-identical to their Wayback captures). Remaining upgrade: a PACER/RECAP docket pull to pin the decree’s judicial entry date, which is held out of the story as an open gap. Publication would run as a cautionary verified-negative for TIN’s thesis — unaudited automated screening is a liability, and “the technology did it” is no defense — never as a green-badge client story.