Rajaram v. Meta Platforms, Inc., 105 F.4th 1179 (9th Cir. 2024)

Plaintiff Purushothaman Rajaram, a naturalized U.S. citizen, applied unsuccessfully to work for Meta Platforms, Inc. several times. Rajaram alleged that Meta refused to hire him because it preferred to hire noncitizens holding an H-1B visa to whom Meta could pay lower wages. Rajaram’s sole claim in this lawsuit was that Meta violated 42 U.S.C. § 1981 (“Section 1981”) by discriminating against U.S. citizens in hiring. The district court dismissed Rajaram’s complaint, holding that Section 1981 does not bar discrimination based on U.S. citizenship, but the Ninth Circuit reversed, holding that “An employer that discriminates against United States citizens gives one class of people—noncitizens, or perhaps some subset of noncitizens—a greater right to make contracts than ‘white citizens.’ If some noncitizens have a greater right to make contracts than ‘white citizens,’ then it is not true that ‘[a]ll persons’ have the ‘same right’ to make contracts as ‘white citizens.’”