The US Department of Labor has alleged Palantir Technologies discriminates against Asian job applicants in its hiring and selection process .

The complaint follows a review by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, which evaluated Palantir’s hiring and selection processes beginning in January 2010, according to the Labor Department. The review found that Palantir relied on a system of employee referrals, which, along with its resume and phone hiring process, resulted in bias against Asians, the agency said.

Lisa Gordon, a spokeswoman for Palantir, said the companywill defend itself “vigorously” and denies allegations of bias. “The results of our hiring practices speak for themselves,” she wrote in an e-mail. “Despite repeated efforts to highlight these outcomes, the Department of Labor relies on a narrow and flawed statistical analysis relating to three job descriptions from 2010 to 2011.”

The Labor Department had no immediate further comment.

Cofounded by billionaire Peter Thiel, the data analysis company is among the most highly vaunted of Silicon Valley startups, securing a $20 billion valuation last year, in part for its contracts with the US Department of Justice’s Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Special Operations Command and the Army.

Silicon Valley has been under pressure to increase diversity across the industry. In recent years, technology companies have made public commitments to increasing hiring of minorities and women while releasing more information about the demographics of their workforces. Progress has been slow.

The Labor Department is asking an administrative law judge to award lost wages, interest, retroactive seniority and all other lost benefits of employment. The government said it filed the complaint after the department and Palantir were unable to resolve the findings through the conciliation process. Palantir’s government contracts should be cancelled, and it should be disbarred from securing future ones if it doesn’t meet the department’s demands, according to the complaint.

Meanwhile, Palantir is engaged in a separate dispute with the government. The Palo Alto, California, company sued the Armyearlier this year, claiming it favored existing contractors and blocked Palantir from competing for the first part of what will likely be a multibillion-dollar contract. </s> SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - (This version of the Sept. 26 story, corrects paragraph 4 to show that Palantir issued a statement denying the allegations, which was contained in an earlier story, instead of that Palantir could not immediately be reached for comment, adds Palantir comment on Labor Department analysis in paragraph 11 which was contained in an earlier story.)

The U.S. Department of Labor filed an administrative lawsuit against Palantir Technologies on Monday, alleging that the data analytics and security company systematically discriminated against Asian job applicants.

Privately held Palantir helps government agencies track down terrorists and uncover financial fraud. It raised $880 million in funding late last year, for a $20 billion valuation, and is considered one of Silicon Valley’s most secretive companies.

The lawsuit alleges Palantir routinely eliminated Asian applicants in the resume screening and telephone interview phases, even when they were as qualified as white applicants.

Palantir denied the allegations in a statement and said it intends to “vigorously defend” against them.

Palantir was co-founded by Peter Thiel and Joe Lonsdale, two of Silicon Valley’s more influential investors and entrepreneurs. A representative for Thiel could not immediately comment on the lawsuit.

Ian Eliasoph, civil rights counsel for the Labor Department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, said Palantir was randomly selected for a review, which examines the number of applicants for a given position compared with applicants’ demographics. If signs of discrimination are found, the office opens an inquiry to search for violations.

From 2010-2015 the compliance office conducted 20,918 compliance evaluations, 78 percent of which resulted in no violations. Some 22 percent had some violation and 2 percent had discrimination findings, according to the Government Accountability Office.

In one example cited by the Labor Department, Palantir reviewed a pool of more than 130 qualified applicants for the role of engineering intern. About 73 percent of applicants were Asian. The lawsuit, which covers Palantir’s conduct between January 2010 and the present, said the company hired 17 non-Asian applicants and four Asians.

“The likelihood that this result occurred according to chance is approximately one in a billion,” said the lawsuit, which was filed with the department’s Office of Administrative Law Judges.

However, Palantir said the Labor Department relied on a “narrow and flawed statistical analysis relating to three job descriptions from 2010 to 2011.”

Employment and civil rights attorney Cliff Palefsky said it was unusual to see hiring discrimination involving Asians.

But Tracy Chou, of Silicon Valley-based diversity and inclusion organization Project Include, said discrimination against Asians for senior positions has been widely publicized.

In 2015, Asians represented 27.2 percent of the professional workforce at Google, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, LinkedIn and Yahoo but were 13.9 percent of the companies’ executive workforces, according to a study by pan-Asian professionals organization Ascend.

“Asians are not perceived to be the same as whites even though in these diversity conversations Asians get lumped together with whites because they’re overrepresented in tech compared to the overall population,” she said.

Since January 2010, Palantir has been a party to federal government contracts worth over $340 million, the lawsuit said.

The Labor Department sent Palantir a notice in October 2015 about its findings, according to the lawsuit. Both before and after that notice, labor regulators attempted to secure Palantir’s voluntary compliance, the lawsuit said, but they did not succeed.

The lawsuit seeks relief for persons affected, including lost wages. </s> Image copyright Thinkstock Image caption Palantir has denied the allegations

Silicon Valley firm Palantir Technologies is being sued by the US government over alleged "systematic" discrimination against Asian applicants and members of staff.

A lawsuit has been filed which alleges that the firm has used discriminatory recruitment procedures since 2010.

The US Department of Labor is seeking compensation for those affected, including lost wages and promotions.

Palantir Technologies said it "firmly denied" the allegations.

"We are disappointed that the Department of Labor chose to proceed with an administrative action and firmly deny the allegations," the company said in a statement shared by the Wall Street Journal (subscription website).

"Despite repeated efforts to highlight the results of our hiring practices, the Department of Labor relies on a narrow and flawed statistical analysis relating to three job descriptions from 2010 to 2011."

On its website it says it "celebrate(s) difference and diversity - of background, approach and identity".

'One in 3.4 million chance'

The government identified three staff roles for which it alleges there was biased recruiting:

When recruiting for a quality assurance engineer, the firm hired six non-Asian staff and one Asian from a pool of 730 applicants, of whom roughly 77% were Asian

There were 1,160 qualified applicants for a software engineer position, of whom approximately 85% were Asian, but Palantir hired 14 non-Asians and 11 Asians

When recruiting for a quality engineer intern, the firm hired 17 non-Asians and four Asians. There were 130 applicants, of whom around 73% were Asian.

It said the likelihood of the software engineer position having been filled that way by chance was "approximately one in 3.4 million".

"From at least January 1, 2010 and going forward to the present, Palantir utilised a four-phase hiring process in which Asian applicants were routinely eliminated during the resume, screen and telephone interview phase despite being as qualified as white applicants with respect to the QA Engineer, Software Engineer and QA Engineer Intern positions," the lawsuit paperwork reads.

"In addition the majority of Palantir's hires into these positions came from an employee referral system that disproportionately excluded Asians."

The firm, which specialises in data mining, is credited with helping the US government find Osama Bin Laden.

Last year, Reuters reported that it was valued at $20bn (£15bn). </s> A discrimination complaint lodged against Harvard's admissions process in 2015 by Asian-American groups could get a fresh look by the Department of Justice — setting the stage for renewed debate on the constitutionality of affirmative action.

The Justice Department said Wednesday that it issued a job posting in its Civil Rights Division for "volunteers" to investigate the complaint, filed by a coalition of 64 Asian-American associations, that was left unresolved from the Obama administration.

DOJ spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores' clarification came after The New York Times and The Washington Post published stories Tuesday that said the department is planning a new project to investigate universities' admissions that may discriminate against white applicants.

Flores didn't specify whether the department is moving forward on the 2015 complaint, but the detail that it is still willing to pursue it at all was heralded Thursday by some Asian-American groups as a welcomed surprise.

"Today, we are very encouraged that the Trump Administration will start looking into this issue, providing Asian-American students with equal protection under the laws," the Asian-American Coalition for Education, which filed the Harvard complaint, said in a statement.

The coalition's president, Yukong Zhao, added that Asian-Americans deserve to have the matter heard by the Justice Department.

Last year, his son, Hubert, filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education claiming that despite having a 5.3 GPA, high PSAT and SAT scores, and other sterling credentials, he was unfairly rejected from Cornell and Columbia universities, The Cornell Daily Sun reported.

"We expect that the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education will take concrete actions to help restore the spirit of (the) American Dream: reward individual efforts and merits, and treat all individuals equally," said Zhao, who is also a Chinese-American author from Florida.

His coalition's 2015 complaint was dismissed by the Department of Education that same year because of a similar lawsuit that had already been filed in federal court. The coalition had been hoping the DOJ would still take it up.

Meanwhile, the other lawsuit — involving former stock broker Edward Blum, who runs the group Students for Fair Admissions — also alleged that Harvard's admissions policies are discriminatory against Asian-Americans. His suit remains in the discovery process.

It says the evidence of discrimination can be seen, in part, in the numbers: A 2009 Princeton study found that Asian-Americans need an SAT score 140 points higher than whites to get into a top private college. But compared to Hispanics, they need to score 270 points higher and compared to blacks, 450 points higher.

The suit also says that while Asian-American enrollment hovers around 14 to 18 percent at Ivy League institutions, it's much higher at state schools in California where racial preferences and other attributes have been banned from admissions consideration since 1996.

But other studies have looked at the difficulties minorities have for getting accepted into certain colleges: A 2013 University of Washington study noted a 23 percentage point drop in minority admissions at public research universities where affirmative action is banned, compared to 1 percent in states without bans.

Proponents of race-based admissions point to Harvard's latest student body data that shows the class of 2021 is more than 22 percent Asian-American — higher than the nearly 15 percent of African-Americans, nearly 12 percent of Latinos and 2.5 percent of Native Americans or Pacific Islanders.

Harvard spokeswoman Rachael Dane said the school — which has a 6 percent acceptance rate, making it one of the hardest colleges to get into — prides itself on attracting a diverse class.

"Harvard's admissions process considers each applicant as a whole person, and we review many factors, consistent with the legal standards established by the U.S. Supreme Court," she said.

The Supreme Court last year upheld the affirmative action policy at the University of Texas Austin after a white student sued the school for racial discrimination in the admissions process.

Prominent Asian-American groups lauded that ruling, saying that while Asian-American students may feel jilted for not being accepted to elite schools despite having the grades, the idea of affirmative action for race is necessary for fostering a level-playing field and bridging disparities in higher education. </s> The Justice Department signaled Wednesday that it would examine “race-based discrimination” in college admissions, alarming some civil rights advocates who fear that the Trump administration is trying to roll back affirmative action policies.

In an internal job posting, the department’s Civil Rights Division said it was seeking lawyers willing to work on an investigation and potential litigation involving race-based admissions policies.

Although Justice Department officials said the move does not herald a shift toward attacking race-conscious admissions policies, civil rights advocates and legal experts said the investment of resources could have a ripple effect that hurts minority students hoping to enroll in college.

In addition, they say, the effort by Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions, who as an Alabama senator voiced opposition to affirmative action, is another stark contrast between the priorities of his Justice Department and those of former Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr., who served under President Obama.

“Whenever there’s a credible allegation of discrimination on the basis of race, the department will look into it,” said a Justice Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the department’s policy to not discuss personnel matters.

The Justice Department’s job posting was first reported late Tuesday by the New York Times. At her regular briefing on Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders acknowledged that the newspaper had obtained a “leaked internal personnel posting,” but declined to comment on it, except to say: “The Department of Justice will always review credible allegations of discrimination on the basis of any race.”

Hours later, the Justice Department issued a statement saying the posting was in response to a complaint filed in 2015 regarding allegations of discrimination against Asian Americans in an unidentified university’s admissions practices.

In recent years, the Supreme Court has mostly ruled favorably on affirmative action in college admissions, although it has upheld some restrictions at the state level that have significantly chipped away at the practice.

Last year, in a 4-3 decision, the Supreme Court upheld the use of race as one factor in evaluating college applicants. The case, Fisher vs. University of Texas, centered on Abigail Fisher, a white Texas resident, who filed suit after she was denied admission there. She had argued that the university’s consideration of race in admissions discriminated against her because she was white.

In cases in 2003 and 1978, the Supreme Court ruled that race could be among several factors weighed when admitting students.

The 1978 case, Regents of University of California vs. Bakke, was a major turning point, said Lee Bollinger, president of Columbia University, who argued in favor of affirmative action before the Supreme Court in 2003 in cases involving the University of Michigan.

In the Bakke case, which involved a medical school applicant to UC Davis, Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. wrote that university leaders could not use affirmative action to correct social injustice, but could as a way to achieve a diverse student body which would contribute to a "robust exchange of ideas."

“It severed a major reason for using the policy,” Bollinger said.

The job posting at the Justice Department caused concerns among civil rights groups that fear the Trump administration will seek to investigate claims similar to Fisher’s.

Jessica A. Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, said the Justice Department could indirectly intimidate universities from using race as a factor in admissions.

“This easily could have a chilling effect, as universities would not want to be subject to being sued or investigated,” Levinson said.

Derrick Johnson, interim president and chief executive of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, said in a statement that the Justice Department “seems laser-focused on achieving rights and privileges for ‘just-us,’ totally excluding people of color.”

“Affirmative action was not created as a way for African-Americans, Latinos, or Asian-Americans to get an unfair advantage over their white peers,” Johnson said. “It’s a mechanism to level the playing field and create equal opportunity for people of color following decades of oppression. We should promote and foster efforts to promote diversity on college and university campuses not hinder it.”

And Matt Cregor, education projects director at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice, said, “If they want to go after affirmative action, they should go after legacy.”

So-called legacy admissions policies, which favor the children of alumni, ultimately exclude minorities from pipelines to leadership jobs, said USC Rossier School of Education professor Estela Bensimon.

“Criteria have changed over time, depending on who was being advantaged,” she said. “When Jews were outscoring non-Jewish white students, the criteria for admission at elite universities changed to include ‘character.’”

Legacy is typically an issue at private schools, which have generally been outside the scope of efforts to rein in affirmative action.

While the courts have affirmed the use of affirmative action in higher education, eight states, including Michigan, Oklahoma, California and Arizona, have barred its use. The state bans generally arose from ballot initiatives or state legislators.

“There’s long been a perception that there were enormous preferences given to minority students and that this crowded out lots and lots of white students,” said Jesse Rothstein, professor of public policy and economics at the UC Berkeley.

In California, voters greenlighted the ban through a ballot initiative in 1996, Proposition 209, which passed with 54.6% of the vote.

The measure’s passage initially decreased black and Latino enrollment throughout the University of California system, particularly at its most selective schools. But UCLA has used other methods, such as recruiting in high-minority areas, to boost its diversity: In 2015, the school caught up to its pre-Proposition 209 levels of minority student enrollment. </s> The Justice Department signaled Wednesday that it would examine “race-based discrimination” in college admissions, alarming some civil rights advocates who fear that the Trump administration is trying to roll back affirmative action policies.

In an internal job posting, the department’s Civil Rights Division said it was seeking lawyers willing to work on an investigation and potential litigation involving race-based admissions policies.

Although Justice Department officials said the move does not herald a shift toward attacking race-conscious admissions policies, civil rights advocates and legal experts said the investment of resources could have a ripple effect that hurts minority students hoping to enroll in college.

In addition, they say, the effort by Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions, who as an Alabama senator voiced opposition to affirmative action, is another stark contrast between the priorities of his Justice Department and those of former Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr., who served under President Obama.

“Whenever there’s a credible allegation of discrimination on the basis of race, the department will look into it,” said a Justice Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the department’s policy to not discuss personnel matters.

The Justice Department’s job posting was first reported late Tuesday by the New York Times. At her regular briefing on Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders acknowledged that the newspaper had obtained a “leaked internal personnel posting,” but declined to comment on it, except to say: “The Department of Justice will always review credible allegations of discrimination on the basis of any race.”

Hours later, the Justice Department issued a statement saying the posting was in response to a complaint filed in 2015 regarding allegations of discrimination against Asian Americans in an unidentified university’s admissions practices.

In recent years, the Supreme Court has mostly ruled favorably on affirmative action in college admissions, although it has upheld some restrictions at the state level that have significantly chipped away at the practice.

Last year, in a 4-3 decision, the Supreme Court upheld the use of race as one factor in evaluating college applicants. The case, Fisher vs. University of Texas, centered on Abigail Fisher, a white Texas resident, who filed suit after she was denied admission there. She had argued that the university’s consideration of race in admissions discriminated against her because she was white.

In cases in 2003 and 1978, the Supreme Court ruled that race could be among several factors weighed when admitting students.

The 1978 case, Regents of University of California vs. Bakke, was a major turning point, said Lee Bollinger, president of Columbia University, who argued in favor of affirmative action before the Supreme Court in 2003 in cases involving the University of Michigan.

In the Bakke case, which involved a medical school applicant to UC Davis, Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. wrote that university leaders could not use affirmative action to correct social injustice, but could as a way to achieve a diverse student body which would contribute to a "robust exchange of ideas."

“It severed a major reason for using the policy,” Bollinger said.

The job posting at the Justice Department caused concerns among civil rights groups that fear the Trump administration will seek to investigate claims similar to Fisher’s.

Jessica A. Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, said the Justice Department could indirectly intimidate universities from using race as a factor in admissions.

“This easily could have a chilling effect, as universities would not want to be subject to being sued or investigated,” Levinson said.

Derrick Johnson, interim president and chief executive of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, said in a statement that the Justice Department “seems laser-focused on achieving rights and privileges for ‘just-us,’ totally excluding people of color.”

“Affirmative action was not created as a way for African-Americans, Latinos, or Asian-Americans to get an unfair advantage over their white peers,” Johnson said. “It’s a mechanism to level the playing field and create equal opportunity for people of color following decades of oppression. We should promote and foster efforts to promote diversity on college and university campuses not hinder it.”

And Matt Cregor, education projects director at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice, said, “If they want to go after affirmative action, they should go after legacy.”

So-called legacy admissions policies, which favor the children of alumni, ultimately exclude minorities from pipelines to leadership jobs, said USC Rossier School of Education professor Estela Bensimon.

“Criteria have changed over time, depending on who was being advantaged,” she said. “When Jews were outscoring non-Jewish white students, the criteria for admission at elite universities changed to include ‘character.’”

Legacy is typically an issue at private schools, which have generally been outside the scope of efforts to rein in affirmative action.

While the courts have affirmed the use of affirmative action in higher education, eight states, including Michigan, Oklahoma, California and Arizona, have barred its use. The state bans generally arose from ballot initiatives or state legislators.

“There’s long been a perception that there were enormous preferences given to minority students and that this crowded out lots and lots of white students,” said Jesse Rothstein, professor of public policy and economics at the UC Berkeley.

In California, voters greenlighted the ban through a ballot initiative in 1996, Proposition 209, which passed with 54.6% of the vote.

The measure’s passage initially decreased black and Latino enrollment throughout the University of California system, particularly at its most selective schools. But UCLA has used other methods, such as recruiting in high-minority areas, to boost its diversity: In 2015, the school caught up to its pre-Proposition 209 levels of minority student enrollment.

“UC has been increasing its outreach efforts to historically underrepresented groups like Latinos and African Americans, while still bound to the strictures of Proposition 209, which bars consideration of race or ethnicity in granting admission,” UC President Janet Napolitano said in a statement. “It would be tragic, to say the least, if these efforts somehow ran afoul of this reported misguided Justice Department initiative.”

One reason states started banning affirmative action, Bollinger said, is a disconnection from history. During the civil rights movement and the Jim Crow era, Bollinger said, people were “painfully aware of the injustices of slavery and Jim Crow laws that favored whites over African Americans and Hispanics,” he said. “It’s hard for movements to sustain themselves.”

In 1997, Sessions told the Senate Judiciary Committee that affirmative action was a “very, very difficult subject.“

”I think it has, in fact, been a cause of irritation and perhaps has delayed the kind of movement to racial harmony we ought to be going forward [with] today. I think it makes people unhappy if they lost a contract or a right to go to a school or a privilege to attend a university simply because of their race,” he said at the time.

More recently, Sessions’ Justice Department has staked out positions on civil rights that have concerned several groups and have contrasted with positions under the Obama administration.

Last month, the department filed a brief in an employment discrimination case arguing that the Civil Rights Act does not protect people who are fired because of their sexual orientation. And in July, the department reversed an Obama-era position on a Texas voter identification law. The department filed a motion in a federal court to dismiss the department's earlier claim that the ID law was enacted with the intention of discriminating against minority voters.

In a May memo to federal prosecutors, Sessions instructed them to pursue the harshest punishments legally allowed, another reversal of an Obama-era move that gave federal lawyers more leeway to reserve such prosecutions for repeat offenders and people who had committed the worst of crimes. Justice Department officials hope the changes at the federal level — which prosecutes a sliver of crimes across the country — will trickle down to a similar approach to crime in states.

Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, which advocates on behalf of civil rights groups, focused on affirmative action Wednesday, saying the move by the Justice Department was another example of the administration “changing course on a key civil rights issue.”

“The announcement today that it is now actively seeking to challenge efforts that colleges and universities have undertaken to expand educational opportunity is an affront to our values as a country and the very mission of the Civil Rights Division,” Gupta, who led that division under Obama, said in a statement. “Longstanding Supreme Court precedent has upheld the constitutionality and compelling state interest of these policies, and generations of Americans have benefited from richer, more inclusive institutions of higher education.”

Times staff writer Joseph Tanfani in Washington contributed to this report. </s> In 2015, when 64 Asian American groups filed a complaint with the Department of Justice alleging that Harvard University illegally discriminated against Asian students in admissions, Joe Zhou had little hope it would go anywhere.

He had made the same allegation against Harvard in a lawsuit on behalf of his son, who had been denied admission despite near-perfect ACT and SAT scores, a 4.44 grade-point average, being named class valedictorian, and a resume that included teaching English in China and serving as captain of the varsity tennis team.

So when the Trump administration announced Wednesday that it planned to investigate racial discrimination against Asians in college admissions, Zhou was thrilled.

“Maybe now people will finally pay attention to something we Asian Americans have been talking about for so long,” he said.

His lawsuit is making its way through a Massachusetts federal district court. His son, who is listed an an anonymous plaintiff in the lawsuit and who did not want his name used in this story, currently attends UC Berkeley.

The broader Asian American community is divided on the issue, with several groups criticizing the administration’s announcement.

“Affirmative action benefits everyone, including Asian Americans,” said Nicole Gon Ochi, an attorney for the civil rights group Asian Americans Advancing Justice, which has filed arguments in the Zhou case backing Harvard’s admission policies. “It especially helps traditionally disadvantaged Asian American students, like Southeast Asian university students and low-income Asian students.”

The group helped sponsor a 2016 poll that found that 64% of Asian American voters supported “affirmative action programs designed to help blacks, women, and other minorities get better access to higher education.”

About 25% of Asians surveyed opposed affirmative action. Among those of Indian, Chinese, Philippine, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese descent who responded, support was lowest among Chinese, at 41%.

Zhou, who is Chinese American, said he’s frequently heard complaints about admissions procedures from friends and families in his community.

“This will not help my son, who will graduate soon, but it could help Asian Americans for the next 200 years,” said Zhou, who is a board member of Students for Fair Admissions, a conservative group that recruits plaintiffs for lawsuits against affirmative action at universities.

It supported a white student’s case against the University of Texas at Austin that was decided last year by the Supreme Court, which said race could be considered in admissions.

In its Wednesday announcement, the Trump administration did not mention Harvard specifically but said the Justice Department would investigate a complaint lodged by 64 Asian groups about discrimination at a university.

The complaint also argues that Harvard’s use of “holistic” admissions — which take into account a wide range of factors beyond academic performance — is really a way “to disguise the fact that it holds Asian Americans to a far higher standard than other students and essentially forces them to compete against each other for admission.”

Many of the groups that filed the Harvard complaint are small, suburban cultural or educational associations, such as the Great Neck Chinese Assn. on New York’s Long Island or the 1441 Manufactured-Home Residents Assn., which represents residents of a mobile home community in Rowland Heights, Calif.

Affirmative action opponents often cite a 2009 study that found Asian Americans had to score 140 points higher on SAT exams in order to be on equal footing with whites in private university admissions — a difference they sometimes call the “Asian tax.”

Sarah Isgur Flores, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said it “is committed to protecting all Americans from all forms of illegal race-based discrimination.”

At Harvard, which has argued in a Supreme Court brief that not considering race would hurt its “excellence” as a school, the incoming class of freshmen is 22.2% Asian American, 14.6% African American, 11.6% Latino, 2.5% Native American or Pacific Islander, and 49.1% white.

By comparison, the U.S. population is 5.7% Asian American, 13.3% African American, 17.8% Latino, 1.3% Native American or Alaska Native, 0.02% Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, and 61.3% white, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Shien Biau Woo, a former lieutenant governor of Delaware, said perceptions of admission disparities spurred the get-out-the-Asian vote group he founded, called the 80-20 Initiative, to sign on to the Department of Justice complaint.

“We didn’t get anywhere on this for a while because we were in a Democratic administration, and politicians serve their party’s interest,” said Woo, a political independent and former Democrat.

But groups on the other side of the issue say enrollment statistics alone don’t tell the full story.

“Most opponents of affirmative action from Asian American communities believe Asians who have higher test scores are missing out on the opportunity to go to elite schools,” Ochi said. “But the test score phenomenon exists regardless of whether the university considers race in its admission. So there is something else happening.”

Ken Forde-Mazrui, a University of Virginia law professor who specializes in race, said that the focus on university admissions is misguided — and that the Trump administration is taking up the complaint by Asians largely because their interests align with those of many whites.

“This is primarily about conservative leaders protecting the privilege of access to society’s resources and opportunities for certain white constituents,” he said. “Such leaders’ purported concern for discrimination against Asian Americans is politically opportunistic.

“I don’t see many of them concerned about discrimination against Asian Americans in other contexts,” he added, “such as the ‘bamboo ceiling’ in corporate America, where such discrimination does not harm white interests.” </s> The University of California has sued the Trump administration over its decision to end a program protecting hundreds of thousands of young immigrants from deportation.The lawsuit filed on Friday in federal court in San Francisco includes university president Janet Napolitano as a plaintiff.Napolitano was Homeland Security secretary under the Obama administration and helped implement its Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.The program protected about 800,000 people who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children or came with families who overstayed visas.The lawsuit says the university will lose students and employees because of President Donald Trump's decision to end the program.An email sent to the U.S. Department of Justice seeking comment was not immediately returned.Fifteen states have sued separately over the president's decision. </s> Three former employees of Google have filed a class action lawsuit against the internet giant, alleging a pattern of discrimination against women workers, including systemically lower pay than their male counterparts.

The lawsuit was filed by ex-Googlers Kelly Ellis, Holly Pease, and Kelli Wisuri in San Francisco Superior Court on Thursday, and follows a suit against the tech giant filed earlier this year by the United States Department of Labor, which said it found evidence of an "extreme" gender pay gap at the company.

The three claim that during the course of their respective time at Google, which spans, between them, from 2005 through 2016, the company "discriminated and continues to discriminate against its female employees by paying female employees less than male employees with similar skills, experience, and duties," reads the suit.

"The net result of this systemic discrimination is that Google pays women less than men for comparable work."

Kelly Ellis, an experienced software engineer, resigned from Google in 2014 after four years "because of the sexist culture," says the complaint.

The suit alleges that Ellis was "occupationally-segregated" into a front-end role because of a "false and gendered perception at Google that back-end software engineering is more technically rigorous, and therefore more prestigious." Ellis observed that "almost all back-end software engineers were men."

"I have come forward to correct a pervasive problem of gender bias at Google," said Ellis in a statement on Thursday. "It is time to stop ignoring these issues in tech."

Ellis and her two fellow plaintiffs claim to represent all women employed by Google and are seeking a jury trial. The class action case will draw on the Department of Labor's recent analysis, which found between six and seven standard deviations between wage rates of men and women based on a snapshot of the salaries of 21,000 workers at Google's Mountain View headquarters.

Google disputes Thursday's allegations, adding that they have "systems in place to ensure that [they] pay fairly."

"We work really hard to create a great workplace for everyone, and to give everyone the chance to thrive here," said spokesperson Gina Scigliano. "In relation to this particular lawsuit, we’ll review it in detail, but we disagree with the central allegations."

"Job levels and promotions are determined through rigorous hiring and promotion committees, and must pass multiple levels of review, including checks to make sure there is no gender bias in these decisions. And we have extensive systems in place to ensure that we pay fairly. But on all these topics, if we ever see individual discrepancies or problems, we work to fix them, because Google has always sought to be a great employer, for every one of our employees."

Google found itself the subject of scrutiny from the alt-right and its allies in August after firing male engineer James Damore, who wrote a manifesto of sorts, claiming there are biological reasons women aren't equally represented in tech leadership, including "neuroticism."

At the time, Google CEO Sundar Pichai issued a memo of his own making it clear that while the company "strongly support[s] the right of Googlers to express themselves," some of the content of the viral document crossed the line by "advancing harmful gender stereotypes," counter to the company's code of conduct.
The Obama administration through the United States Department of Labor sues Peter Thiel's Palantir Technologies for alleged discrimination against Asians in its hiring practices.