AI hiring compliance for Local Law 144, EEOC rules and AI interview bias audits

No, and this is the single most expensive misunderstanding in the category. Local Law 144 places the bias audit, the published summary and the candidate notice on the employer or employment agency that uses an automated employment decision tool. EEOC guidance is the same shape: if a selection procedure produces adverse impact, the employer answers for it even when a vendor wrote the algorithm. Buying a tool described as compliant does not move that duty.

What a tool genuinely changes is how much work compliance takes. If every candidate for a role got different questions from different interviewers, reconstructing why someone was rejected means interviewing your own recruiters months later. If the process was structured and recorded, the evidence already exists. Our guide to US state AI interview laws sets out each rule in detail.

A bias audit under Local Law 144 is an independent evaluation of whether the tool produces different selection rates by sex and by race or ethnicity, including the intersections of the two. It has to be conducted within the previous 12 months by someone independent, which means not by you and not by the vendor, and a summary of the results has to be published where candidates can find it.

The duty attaches to the employer using an AEDT for a job in New York City, regardless of where the company is headquartered. If you are hiring for an NYC-based role from Austin, the rule reaches you. The definition of what counts as an AEDT is broader than most people expect, and a weighted spreadsheet can qualify: we cover the test in our explainer on automated employment decision tools.

Local Law 144 penalties start at 500 dollars for a first violation, with up to 500 dollars more for each additional violation on the same day, and 500 to 1,500 dollars for each subsequent violation. The number that matters is not the unit price but the multiplier: each day the tool is used in violation is a separate violation, and failing to give notice is counted separately again. A quiet non-compliant quarter is not a 500 dollar problem.

Enforcement has been light so far, and that is changing. A New York State Comptroller audit released December 2, 2025 covering July 2023 to June 2025 found that the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection had reviewed 32 companies and identified one issue, while the Comptroller found at least 17 potential violations among those same companies. Around 75 percent of test calls to 311 about AEDTs were misrouted. The Comptroller made 13 recommendations and DCWP fully adopted 10 of them, so the reasonable planning assumption for 2026 is tighter enforcement, not continued quiet.

It can technically, and we deliberately do not allow it. The moment software rejects an applicant with no human in the loop, it is squarely an automated employment decision under Local Law 144 and a selection procedure under EEOC guidance, and the employer owns the resulting adverse impact. The design that lowers legal exposure also happens to hire better, because the candidate who interviews nervously but has done the exact job for six years stays visible.

Our AI interview agent ranks candidates and advances them to a recruiter with transcripts attached. A person decides who progresses and who does not, every time. Scores are evidence for that decision rather than a substitute for it.

Four things, and none of them are exotic. Ask every candidate for a role the same job-related questions. Score against a rubric written before you saw any candidates, with anchored levels rather than a vague impression. Keep the evidence, meaning the transcript behind each score. Keep a human making the decision, with the authority and the information to overrule the ranking.

Two things to avoid, both of which turn up in this category: do not let a tool infer personality or competence from facial expression or vocal tone, which is the weakest science in the field and the fastest route into Illinois and Maryland trouble, and do not score anything that is not job related. If you are writing the rubric now, our interview scorecard template gives you a structure that holds up.