OpenAI and its subsidiary Statsig reached a settlement with the Justice Department in August 2026 after allegations that the company favored visa holders over American workers in hiring. The total deal: $1.2 million in civil penalties and a $2 million back-pay fund for affected US workers.
The DOJ's Civil Rights Division found that OpenAI gave preferential treatment to temporary visa holders when recruiting for positions under the PERM program, which lets employers sponsor foreign workers for green cards. The program requires genuine testing of the domestic labor market first. OpenAI's units, investigators determined, treated those recruitment steps as a box to check rather than a real search for qualified Americans.
What changes now
Going forward, OpenAI must revise its hiring practices to ensure American workers get fair consideration for PERM-related roles. The settlement operates under the Immigration and Nationality Act's anti-discrimination provisions, which prohibit citizenship-based hiring bias. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon called the agreement both corrective and preventive, designed to fix past harm while forcing structural changes.
OpenAI joins other major tech companies caught in similar patterns. Apple settled for $25 million over the same type of conduct, one of the largest resolutions in this category. The DOJ has repeatedly flagged how tech firms use the PERM process as window dressing, sponsoring foreign talent while skipping genuine domestic recruitment efforts. At $3.2 million, OpenAI's settlement ranks among the more substantial recent enforcement actions in this area.
This article is informational and does not constitute legal or employment advice.
