Welcome in, today is Monday, July twenty-seventh, and we begin with two lawsuits, reported by Employee Benefit News, that are drawing the legal lines around artificial intelligence in hiring, performance, and leave decisions. The argument, from Employee Benefit News, is that most of the debate is only looking at half the picture. Nearly all the attention has landed on whether AI made an employment decision. But that reporting says a second question matters just as much, whether the data and criteria feeding the system properly account for disability-related absences, protected leave, and accommodations. It points to two cases. In Mobley versus Workday, a court let an ADA claim proceed on allegations that the applicant-screening tool relied on factors that may have worked as proxies for disability. In the newly filed Doe versus Meta, plaintiffs allege that workers with disabilities and medical restrictions were disproportionately selected for termination through flawed algorithmic profiling and performance scoring. Workday and Meta both deny the allegations. The through-line, in that reading, is that dropping a human into the loop is not enough if the underlying scores were never built to account for protected leave. Industry reaction leans toward a sharper test, whether that human can actually audit the AI's reasoning and override it without friction. Also today, the Trump administration has agreed to drop a subpoena that ordered the University of Pennsylvania to hand over the names of Jewish people on its campus. According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said it will take no further measures to enforce the demand, and agreed not to pursue the information by other means. In exchange, per that reporting, Penn will drop its appeal before the Third Circuit. The subpoena grew out of an EEOC investigation into antisemitism complaints, opened in late 2023 by Commissioner Andrea Lucas, now the agency's chair. Bloomberg Law frames the resolution as a settlement of the suit the agency filed to compel the school to share information on faculty tied to Jewish Studies and campus programs. The Times of Israel reports that Jewish groups on campus, while backing efforts against antisemitism, had warned that compelled cataloging of Jews carries its own historical dangers. For HR and legal teams, it redraws a boundary line on how far a government information request can reach into employees' religious identity. No reason was given for the reversal, and the underlying investigation continues. Separately, a read on where federal enforcement is heading, laid out in a law-firm client alert. The alert starts with the EEOC's own published performance plan, which names four priorities for the administration's second term, DEI-related discrimination, anti-American bias, women's sex-based rights, and religious liberty and accommodation. But the actual docket tells a different story. That analysis counts thirty-six discrimination lawsuits in the first half of the year, and finds disability claims the single largest share, fourteen suits and three subpoenas, even though disability never made the priority list. Religious-accommodation cases are climbing too, which the analysis ties to the Supreme Court's Groff versus DeJoy decision, raising the bar employers must clear to deny a request. It also flags DEI-related suits against large employers, including a claim of sex and race discrimination against a white male employee passed over for promotion. The takeaway for employers is that stated priorities and filed cases are not the same map, and the gaps are where exposure tends to hide. Now, a few more headlines moving the trade today. The H-1B visa program has hit its 2027 cap. Per HR Dive, even as the administration works to discourage the program, many top employers keep leaning on it. Nike is caught between two legal fronts. Per WWD, it's absorbing a seven and a half million dollar gender-discrimination verdict while grappling with a federal investigation into its DEI policies. Pay raises are getting choosier. A WTW report, via HR Dive, projects salary budgets up three point four percent next year, with employers favoring targeted increases and spot awards over broad hikes. The EEOC plans to rescind its national-origin discrimination guidance dating to nineteen eighty. But per Bloomberg Law, attorneys warn English-only rules and citizenship requirements will still risk Title Seven suits. And finally, the Labor Department has proposed a rule making it easier for ERISA-governed group health plans to deliver mandatory notices electronically. Per HR Dive, a department official called it a big step forward.