Instacart agreed Oct. 20 to a $5 million settlement with the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The agencies said the company’s hiring for green card-linked jobs intentionally favored temporary visa holders over U.S. workers. Instacart said its practices complied with the law.
What the Instacart Settlement Requires
The Justice Department announcement says the agreement with Maplebear Inc., which does business as Instacart, includes up to $4 million for applicants and deterred applicants affected from December 2023 to February 2026. A claims administrator will decide who qualifies for back pay and compensatory damages. Instacart will also pay $1 million in civil penalties to the United States.
The company must post jobs advertised under the Permanent Labor Certification process, known as PERM, on its public career website and accept electronic applications. It must also train personnel on anti-discrimination obligations, revise employment policies and follow monitoring and reporting requirements. Neither agency says how long the monitoring lasts or how many positions were involved. Applicants who believe the practices affected them can email Instacart@eeoc.gov until the claims administrator sets up its own contact address.
The fund makes up 80% of the total, and penalties make up 20%, a calculation from the agencies’ figures. The affected period of December 2023 to February 2026 covers about two years and three months.
How the PERM Process Works
PERM is the program that lets an employer sponsor a temporary visa holder for permanent residence after good-faith recruitment of U.S. workers. The agencies said employers may not create extra burdens for U.S. workers, publish discriminatory job ads or use processes that sort applicants in ways that deprive U.S. workers of opportunities.
The Labor Department’s regulation sets the recruitment steps. For a professional occupation, the employer must place a job order with the state workforce agency for 30 days and run advertisements on two different Sundays in a newspaper of general circulation. It must also complete three more steps from a list that includes job fairs, its own website, a job search website, campus recruiting and employee referral programs.
All of that recruitment must take place at least 30 days and no more than 180 days before filing. Each advertisement must name the employer, direct applicants to the employer and describe the vacancy specifically. The employer then signs a recruitment report that describes each step, the results and the number of U.S. workers it rejected, sorted by lawful job-related reason. The regulation says an employer cannot reject a U.S. worker for lacking skills that a reasonable period of on-the-job training would supply.
The mechanism explains why a mailing requirement matters. The recruitment report is the record that shows how many qualified U.S. workers applied. If the application route for the advertised job is harder than the company’s ordinary route for the same kind of job, fewer U.S. applicants finish it, and the record shows fewer candidates to consider. The agencies said Instacart required physical mailing for PERM-advertised positions while its standard process accepted electronic applications. They said that as a result many U.S. workers who applied were not timely considered.
What the Government Alleges
The Justice Department said its Civil Rights Division and the EEOC found that Instacart’s hiring and recruitment under PERM intentionally preferred workers with temporary employment visas over U.S. and American workers. The legal basis is the Immigration and Nationality Act, which bars citizenship status discrimination, and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars national origin discrimination.
The EEOC announcement says its investigation found similar evidence. The practice had drawn press attention before the settlement. Newsweek reported in August 2025 that Instacart asked applicants for some green card-linked jobs to mail resumes to its global mobility department. Jobs.Now, a site that republished such job ads, argued that Americans were being shut out because the listings were hard to find.
What Instacart Said
Instacart told Newsweek that “while we maintain that our practices complied with all applicable laws and regulations,” it was pleased to resolve the matter. The company said it is proud to be a U.S.-based grocery technology platform and has argued that the PERM rules are outdated, according to Newsweek’s reporting. The agencies’ announcements do not address whether Instacart admitted wrongdoing.
Where the Case Fits in the Enforcement Record
Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division, said the department “will not stop fighting for U.S. workers until there is a fair playing field.” She described the agreement as the 15th settlement the division has reached under her leadership to protect U.S. workers. The department says it has secured more than $34 million in back pay and more than $16 million in civil penalties since the original launch of the Protecting U.S. Workers Initiative, which it relaunched in 2025. Andrea Lucas, the EEOC’s chair, said anti-American national origin discrimination “has no place in our economy.”
The EEOC says this is its fourth public settlement involving that type of discrimination since 2025 and that it has five federal lawsuits pending. Newsweek compared the Instacart penalty with other PERM cases, reporting that OpenAI paid $3.2 million in a similar settlement and that Cloudera accepted a two-year PERM debarment. The agencies’ announcement does not discuss those cases. Workers with questions can call the Immigrant and Employee Rights hotline at 1-800-255-7688 on weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. ET.
