Last Friday, a jury ruled that Cognizant, a company providing thousands of workers to the Silicon Valley tech sector and other employers in the Bay Area, intentionally discriminated against non-Indian employees. According to Mercury News, this ruling stems from a lawsuit in which three U.S.-born workers—Vartan Piroumian from California, Christy Palmer from Arizona, and Edward Cox from Texas—claimed discrimination in a Los Angeles federal court in 2017. They were later joined by another plaintiff, Jean-Claude Franchitti, a green card holder from France, who also identified as Caucasian.
The lawsuit alleges that Cognizant initially removed many non-Indian workers from projects, effectively sidelining them and keeping them without work until they were laid off following company policy. Following the verdict, Cognizant expressed its disappointment and announced plans to appeal.
Ron Hira, a professor at Howard University who studies the H-1B visa program, pointed out that federal data indicates that Cognizant sponsors hundreds of H-1B visas each year for Indian nationals to work in the Bay Area. In 2023 alone, the company arranged for H-1B holders to work with major employers in the Bay Area, including Google, Meta, Apple, PG&E, Kaiser Permanente, and Walmart.
According to the Bay Area Council, nearly 60,000 foreign nationals with H-1B visas were authorized to work for companies in the region in 2019, with the majority coming from India. The lawsuit asserts that Cognizant’s preference for Indian workers led to a surge in visa applications linked to “non-existent jobs,” making it one of the largest beneficiaries of the H-1B program. Hira noted that regulations require companies applying for H-1B visas to have actual job openings for the visa holders.
The suit also claims that Franchitti, who holds a Ph.D. in computer science, was hired in 2007 and during his nine years as a director and executive at Cognizant, he witnessed the company’s bias toward visa-holding Indian employees. He alleges he was fired in 2016 for raising concerns about being pressured to sign numerous fraudulent invitation letters to support H-1B applications for jobs that did not exist.
The lawsuit contends that these fraudulent invitation letters were part of Cognizant’s strategy to acquire a significant number of H-1B visas and build a “strong inventory” of Indian nationals to place in U.S. companies. The jury has recommended punitive damages against Cognizant.
