ACLU complaint says HireVue AI denied a deaf Indigenous worker captioning and a promotion
The ACLU of Colorado filed a discrimination complaint with the EEOC and Colorado Civil Rights Division in March 2025 on behalf of a deaf Indigenous Intuit employee who was denied a CART captioning accommodation for a HireVue AI video interview. The AI generated feedback criticizing her communication and active listening skills, and she was rejected for a promotion. The complaint alleges violations of the ADA, Title VII, and the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act.
An AI interview tool told a deaf woman to practice active listening after denying her the captioning accommodation she needed to participate.
Key facts
- What
- The ACLU of Colorado filed a discrimination complaint with the EEOC and Colorado Civil Rights Division in March 2025 on behalf of a deaf Indigenous Intuit employee who was denied a CART captioning accommodation for a HireVue AI video interview.
- Incident date
- Mar 1, 2025
- Who
- Intuit
- Failure mode
- Policy Violation
- AI surface
- Agentic Workflow
- Severity
- Medium
What happened
D.K., a deaf Indigenous woman employed by Intuit in customer service, applied for a Seasonal Manager promotion in spring 2024 and was required to complete a HireVue AI video interview. She requested human-generated CART captioning as a disability accommodation, but Intuit denied the request and told her the platform's built-in subtitles were sufficient. Those subtitles were inconsistent and did not capture all audio content, so she relied on Chrome auto-captions that produced significant errors. The HireVue AI subsequently rated her poorly on communication skills, advising her to practice active listening and project more confidence, and she was rejected for the promotion.
What broke inside the model
- 01 · TriggerA prompt pushes against a deployment boundary.
- 02 · Model stepThe model produces the disallowed output.
- 03 · Control gapNo enforcement blocks it at generation time.
- 04 · FailureThe output crosses the policy line.
- 05 · ConsequenceA limit the business set is breached in public.
The output crosses a policy boundary the deployment had defined.
HireVue's automated speech recognition system failed to accurately process the speech of a deaf speaker with a deaf accent, and the platform's built-in subtitles were inconsistent and did not cover all audio content. Because Intuit denied the requested human-generated CART captioning, the employee was forced to rely on inaccurate Chrome auto-captions. The AI then evaluated her responses as deficient in communication and active listening, mistaking disability-related speech patterns for poor performance.
What it cost
Sources
- Court FilingComplaint of Discrimination (Redacted) Against HireVue & Intuitaclu.org
- PressAI hiring software was biased against deaf employees, ACLU alleges in ADA casehrdive.com
- PressAnother Legal Challenge to an AI Interviewing Toollawandtheworkplace.com
Cite this entry
https://failureindex.ai/failures/aclu-complaint-says-hirevue-ai-deniedAI Failure Index. "ACLU complaint says HireVue AI denied a deaf Indigenous worker captioning and a promotion" (FI-0152). Realm Labs. https://failureindex.ai/failures/aclu-complaint-says-hirevue-ai-denied (indexed Jun 4, 2026).Data fields CC-BY 4.0, prose citation permitted. Incident ID FI-0152. Full dataset at /data.
Note from Realm Labs, the Index steward
How Realm would have caught this
- Prism
- OmniGuard
Realm compares what the model is about to output or do against the policy that governs the deployment, in real time, and can deny or redact the action before it takes effect, which is the gap an after-the-fact review never closes in time.