ACLU asks California to investigate Criteria's Emotify hiring test

ACLU asks California to investigate Criteria's Emotify hiring test

9 October 2026: The American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Northern California have asked the California Civil Rights Department to investigate Criteria Corporation, a vendor of pre-employment assessments, over a test called Emotify. The complaint is dated 6 October 2026.

Not yet independently verified. The ACLU press release and complaint are the only primary sources. Criteria Corp had not responded to press requests for comment, and no reply from the company has been checked. We will update this when it can be confirmed, and remove this note.

Emotify claims to measure emotional intelligence by asking candidates to read facial expressions and match them to descriptions of emotions. The complaint says the exercise mirrors clinical diagnostic tests for autism so closely that it may count as a disability-related inquiry or a medical or psychological examination, which California's Fair Employment and Housing Act and the federal Americans with Disabilities Act restrict before a conditional job offer. It also argues the test may screen out qualified disabled applicants, and a report on the filing adds that candidates are not given enough information to ask for an accommodation or an alternative.

The filing goes beyond one product. The ACLU says other Criteria tools raise concerns too: a cognitive aptitude assessment, personality assessments, and AI video interviewing and proctoring features that it says may perform worse for disabled applicants, people with accents, and Black, Latine and Indigenous speakers. Its request to the department is for an investigation of Criteria's hiring technologies and practices; the material we reviewed lists no other remedy.

Brian Dimmick, senior staff attorney in the ACLU Disability Rights Program, said: "These hiring tools pose an unacceptable risk of amplifying existing discrimination in the workplace." Colin Killick, executive director of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, said: "Baking that discrimination into an app doesn't make it any less discriminatory."

A complaint is not a finding, and the Civil Rights Department has not said whether it will open an investigation. Criteria did not respond to HR Dive's request for comment before publication.

Our assessment software category lists 9 products.

The case sits alongside other California litigation over automated hiring. Workday still faces an ongoing Fair Employment and Housing Act case over its screening tools, while Sirius XM won summary judgment in a separate AI hiring bias claim, according to HR Dive. Employers that buy assessments from any vendor remain responsible under the same statutes for how the results are used.

Company profile on TrustList: Criteria Corp.

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Sources

• ACLU: ACLU files civil rights complaint challenging discriminatory hiring products, 9 October 2026
• ACLU: complaint to the California Civil Rights Department re Emotify (PDF), 6 October 2026
• HR Dive: ACLU files California complaint over Emotify hiring assessment tool, 9 October 2026