The Justice Department filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Cloudera Inc., alleging the California-based technology company intentionally discriminated against American workers by giving high-paying jobs to holders of temporary visas over U.S. citizens.
The civil complaint, which was filed with the Office of the Chief Administrative Hearing Officer, argues Cloudera violated the Immigration and Nationality Act by instituting hurdles that stopped U.S. workers from applying to high-paying positions at the company, while giving special access to foreign visa holders for well-paying technology jobs.
Cloudera, which has been owned by private equity firms Clayton, Dubilier & Rice and KKR since going private in 2021, allegedly created a separate recruitment and hiring process that deterred qualified American job-seekers from applying. The Santa Clara, California-based firm provides enterprise data cloud and analytics services.
Cloudera did not immediately return a request for comment.
The company allegedly directed American applicants to an internal email account that blocked external messages, resulting in bounce-back notifications to would-be applicants.
“Employers cannot use the PERM sponsorship process as a backdoor for discriminating against U.S. workers,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement. “The Division will not hesitate to sue companies who intentionally deter U.S. workers from applying to American jobs.”
The suit focuses on Cloudera’s use of the permanent labor certification program (PERM), which allows employers to employ foreign workers and sponsor them for permanent residency only once they’ve shown good-faith recruitment of U.S. workers for open positions. The complaint claims Cloudera failed to recruit Americans in good faith even as it sponsored current employees under the PERM program.
One American worker filed a complaint with the department upon attempting unsuccessfully to apply to Cloudera, which led to the lawsuit, the filing states.
The action is part of the department’s Protecting U.S. Workers Initiative, which was relaunched in 2025.
“A top priority of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division is protecting American workers from unlawful discrimination in favor of foreign visa workers,” Dhillon said at the time. “Companies engaging in such discrimination are on notice that the days of the federal government looking the other way on American workforce protection are over.”
The initiative has emerged victorious in 10 separate settlements over the past year, targeting companies alleged to have chosen temporary visa holders over American workers.
The department received the underlying discrimination charge as part of its review of PERM-related practices. Under the INA, employers cannot discriminate against U.S. workers based on citizenship status in the hiring and recruitment process.
The Protecting U.S. Workers Initiative seeks to enforce compliance with anti-discrimination requirements during the labor certification process. The Civil Rights Division’s Immigrant and Employee Rights Section oversees these cases.
