Instacart, the San Francisco-based grocery delivery giant, has agreed to pay $5 million to resolve federal allegations that it discriminated against U.S. workers during its green-card hiring process, favoring employees on temporary work visas instead. The settlement, reached jointly by the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, targets hiring practices tied to the company's permanent labor certification filings.
The agreement was announced Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Justice, which said it reached the deal with Maplebear Inc., Instacart's formal corporate name. Federal investigators concluded that the company intentionally discriminated against U.S. and American workers based on citizenship status and national origin, preferring applicants who held temporary employment visas over domestic candidates during the permanent labor certification, or PERM, process. The alleged citizenship-status discrimination was found to violate the Immigration and Nationality Act, while the national-origin allegations were tied to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon, who leads the Civil Rights Division, noted that the Instacart agreement marks the 15th settlement her division has secured to penalize companies for preferring temporary visa holders over U.S. workers, according to the Department of Justice. The case adds another entry to a growing list of enforcement actions against companies, mostly in the technology sector, accused of structuring their hiring to steer jobs away from qualified Americans.
What the PERM Process Is Supposed to Require
The PERM process exists because federal law requires employers sponsoring foreign workers for permanent residency to first prove no qualified U.S. worker is available for the job. Department of Labor regulations at 20 C.F.R. § 656.10(c), outlined by Klasko Immigration Law Partners, require employers to conduct that recruitment in good faith, using standard and accessible procedures identical to those used for any other job opening. Section 1324b of the Immigration and Nationality Act separately bars employers from discriminating against U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, asylees, and refugees during recruitment and hiring based on citizenship status, the firm notes.
Regulators have increasingly treated any deviation from standard recruiting channels during PERM hiring as a red flag. The Department of Labor launched Project Firewall and coordinated with the Department of Justice. Separately, the DOJ relaunched the Protecting U.S. Workers Initiative in 2025.
A Pattern Stretching Across the Tech Industry
Instacart is far from the only company caught in this enforcement wave. In August 2026, OpenAI OpCo LLC and Statsig Inc. reached a combined $3.2 million settlement with the Department of Justice after requiring U.S. applicants to submit paper applications by mail for PERM positions while accepting electronic submissions for other roles, per Duane Morris LLP. That mail-in requirement has become a familiar tactic regulators cite as an artificial barrier meant to discourage domestic applicants from completing the process.
The Instacart penalty is dwarfed by the largest case in this category: Apple Inc. agreed to a $25 million settlement in November 2023, comprising $18.25 million in back pay and $6.75 million in civil penalties, to resolve claims it deterred U.S. workers from applying for PERM-designated jobs. Facebook Inc., now Meta Platforms, settled joint DOJ and Department of Labor enforcement actions for $14.25 million in October 2021 after prosecutors alleged the company routinely reserved positions for temporary visa holders and required paper applications by mail, according to SHRM. More recently, the Department of Justice filed suit in April 2026 against Santa Clara-based data firm Cloudera Inc., resulting in an October 2026 settlement that imposed back-pay obligations and a two-year debarment from the PERM program after the company allegedly failed to list PERM-designated openings on public career portals.
Instacart's Broader Regulatory Footprint
The hiring settlement adds to a mounting list of legal exposure for the San Francisco company across multiple regulatory fronts. Instacart separately agreed to a $60 million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission following allegations of deceptive pricing and hidden delivery fee practices, as Hoodline previously reported. The company also paid nearly $750,000 in March 2024 to settle municipal regulatory allegations in Seattle that it mishandled paid sick leave and restricted deactivated gig couriers' access to earned time off, a case Hoodline detailed in its coverage of a related Walmart settlement over Seattle gig-worker protections.
Taken together, the cases show a company facing scrutiny from federal civil rights enforcers, the FTC, and municipal labor regulators simultaneously. The Department of Justice's statement on the settlement includes a linked summary of the agreement's specific terms, though the broader message from regulators is that PERM recruitment shortcuts are being treated as civil rights violations rather than technical paperwork lapses.
