Instacart Agrees to $5 Million DOJ and EEOC Settlement Over PERM Hiring

The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced a $5,000,000 joint settlement with Instacart on October 20, 2026, resolving allegations that the company made U.S. workers mail paper applications for jobs advertised through the federal PERM process while its ordinary hiring accepted electronic ones.

Information last verified on October 22, 2026. This is a developing story; we update it as the record changes.

Jurisdiction scope: This covers a federal administrative settlement between two United States agencies and one employer, under federal hiring discrimination law. It does not address state law wage claims, immigration benefits for the workers Instacart sponsored, or any other matter involving the company. For the baseline federal and state rules on hiring and firing, see our guide to at-will employment in the United States.

What Happened

The two agencies announced the settlement jointly on Tuesday, October 20, 2026. According to the identical releases posted by the EEOC and the Justice Department's Office of Public Affairs (release number 26-1230), the agencies "secured a $5,000,000 settlement with Maplebear Inc., doing business as Instacart, a San Francisco, California-based online delivery service."

The releases describe the conduct narrowly and concretely. The Justice Department says its investigation "found that Instacart created additional burdens on U.S. workers to apply for job opportunities by requiring that applications be physically mailed for positions advertised as part of PERM recruitment," and that the EEOC's investigation "uncovered similar evidence." The releases add that this "departed from Instacart's standard recruitment process, which allowed electronic applications," and that "as a result, many of the U.S. workers who applied were not timely considered."

PERM is the Department of Labor's permanent labor certification process. An employer that wants to sponsor a worker for permanent residence has to advertise the job and genuinely test the U.S. labor market first. The agencies' theory is that Instacart ran that required test through a channel its own hiring did not otherwise use, which the agencies say created additional burdens on U.S. workers and left many of those who applied not timely considered, while preferring workers already holding temporary employment visas.

Both agency heads framed the case as part of a broader enforcement push.

"Today's settlement makes clear that when employers erect unlawful barriers that harm American workers, the EEOC will act decisively." EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas, joint DOJ and EEOC announcement, October 20, 2026

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Civil Rights Division called the agreement "the fifteenth settlement agreement the Civil Rights Division has reached under my leadership to protect U.S. workers." The releases put that number in context: it is the fifteenth settlement since the Justice Department relaunched its Protecting U.S. Workers Initiative in 2025, and, measured from the initiative's original launch during President Trump's first administration rather than from the 2025 relaunch, the Department reports securing "over $34 million in back pay for U.S. workers" and "over $16 million in civil penalties." On the EEOC side, the agency describes the Instacart agreement as its fourth public settlement involving anti-American national origin discrimination since 2025, with five lawsuits still pending in federal court.

The terms

The agencies linked a one page document titled "Summary of Instacart Settlement Agreement," published by the Civil Rights Division, which lists the obligations:

• A settlement fund to compensate applicants to PERM positions and deterred applicants affected from December 2023 to February 2026.
• $1,000,000 in civil penalties to the United States.
• A claims administrator retained to contact eligible claimants and give them an opportunity to receive compensation.
• Posting PERM positions on Instacart's public website and allowing U.S. workers to submit electronic applications.
• Revised PERM related policies.
• Annual training of personnel on the citizenship status and national origin discrimination provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act and Title VII.
• A monitor appointed to oversee Instacart's PERM program, with compliance reports.

One figure is stated two different ways in the agencies' own materials, and the difference matters to anyone estimating a payout. The press releases say Instacart "will establish a settlement fund of up to $4,000,000" (emphasis added), and the Civil Rights Division's settlements and lawsuits page says Instacart "will create a settlement fund of up to $4,000,000." The Division's one page summary document is the lone outlier: it describes a fund "totaling $4,000,000." The ceiling language carries the weight of the agencies' own announcements, so that is the safer reading, but we flag the gap rather than treat it as closed. No document states a floor, and only the full executed agreement would settle it.

The Civil Rights Division's settlements and lawsuits page adds two obligations the summary leaves out: that Instacart must also enter candidates in its central applicant-tracking system, and that the training and monitoring requirements run for three years. That page also dates the finalized agreement to October 19, 2026, the day before the joint announcement.

As of October 22, 2026, the only settlement document either agency has linked from its announcement is that summary, and the settlements and lawsuits page links the same two items, the press release and that summary. We did not find the full executed agreement posted on the Civil Rights Division's Immigrant and Employee Rights Section page or on the EEOC newsroom, and neither release includes a statement from Instacart.

Who the Money Covers, and How Someone Gets Counted

The compensable group has two halves. The first is people who actually applied for an Instacart position advertised as part of PERM recruitment during the stated period. The second is "deterred applicants," which in this context means people who would have applied but were put off by the application method itself. That concept is not invented for this case: in a 2023 agreement resolving a materially similar PERM investigation, the Civil Rights Division wrote that the employer's "less effective recruitment procedures deterred U.S. applicants from applying and nearly always resulted in zero or very few mailed applications that Apple considered for PERM-related job positions."

The period is December 2023 to February 2026. The releases do not break that window down further, and they do not say how many people are in the group or what any individual payment might be.

Eligibility is decided by the claims administrator, not by DOJ, not by the EEOC, and not by anyone reading this. The releases say the administrator "will contact potential aggrieved individuals and will determine eligibility for back pay and compensatory damages." Until that administrator publishes its own contact details, the agencies ask applicants and deterred applicants to email Instacart@eeoc.gov "if they believe they may be aggrieved so that agencies can share this information with the claims administrator."

Three honest caveats about that email address. It is an information channel to the agencies, not a claim form. Writing to it is not a filing, and the agencies have not said it guarantees contact from the administrator. And nothing in the published materials promises any particular amount, or any payment at all, to any individual.

What the Law Actually Says

Two separate statutes were in play, which is why two agencies signed one agreement.

The Justice Department's half rests on the Immigration and Nationality Act's anti-discrimination provision, codified at 8 U.S.C. 1324b and titled "Unfair immigration-related employment practices." Section 1324b(a)(1) makes it an unfair immigration-related employment practice for an employer "to discriminate against any individual (other than an unauthorized alien ...) with respect to the hiring, or recruitment or referral for a fee, of the individual for employment" because of national origin, or, for a "protected individual," because of citizenship status. The statute's reach is not limited to the final decision. The Justice Department's implementing regulation defines "Hiring" as "all conduct and acts during the entire recruitment, selection, and onboarding process undertaken to make an individual an employee" (28 C.F.R. 44.101(h)), which is the hook for a case about how a job was advertised and how applications were accepted. The statute's separate phrase "recruitment or referral for a fee" is narrower and does not carry that weight: the same regulation gives those terms the meaning they have in 8 C.F.R. 274a.1, where "recruit for a fee" means soliciting a person and referring them to another with the intent of obtaining employment for them "for remuneration," which describes paid third-party recruiters rather than an employer filling its own vacancies. The 2023 Apple agreement took the same route, describing "discriminatory PERM recruitment, which is part of the hiring process."

"Protected individual" is a defined term under 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3). It covers U.S. citizens and nationals, lawful permanent residents, certain temporary residents, admitted refugees, and people granted asylum, with timing conditions on naturalization for some categories. The statute also carries a proviso that cuts the other way: under 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(4), it is not an unfair practice to prefer to hire a U.S. citizen or national over an alien "if the two individuals are equally qualified."

The EEOC's half rests on Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Under 42 U.S.C. 2000e-2(a)(1) it is unlawful for an employer to "fail or refuse to hire" or otherwise discriminate against an individual because of national origin, and under 42 U.S.C. 2000e-2(a)(2) it is unlawful to "limit, segregate, or classify his employees or applicants for employment in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities." A separate provision, 42 U.S.C. 2000e-3(b), reaches job notices and advertisements that indicate a prohibited "preference, limitation, specification, or discrimination" based on national origin. Those three provisions line up almost word for word with the conduct the agencies' releases describe.

Why the work was split

The division is written into the immigration statute itself. Under 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(2)(B), the INA provision does not apply to national origin discrimination where that discrimination "is covered under section 703 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964." In other words, Congress gave Title VII the first claim on national origin and left the INA with citizenship status, plus the national origin cases Title VII does not reach at all. Title VII only covers employers with fifteen or more employees (42 U.S.C. 2000e(b)), while the INA provision excludes only employers of three or fewer (8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(2)(A)), so for a small employer the INA is the national origin route. In this case DOJ took citizenship status and the EEOC took national origin, and the same paper application practice supported both.

That split has a practical consequence for individuals. Under 8 U.S.C. 1324b(b)(2), a charge generally cannot be filed with the Immigrant and Employee Rights Section about national origin discrimination if a charge on the same facts is already pending at the EEOC, and the reverse is also true, unless the first charge is dismissed as outside that statute's scope. The two tracks are not meant to be run simultaneously on identical facts.

What PERM Actually Requires, and What It Does Not

It is worth being precise here, because the easy reading of this story is wrong. The Labor Department's PERM regulations do not require employers to accept electronic applications.

For professional occupations, 20 C.F.R. 656.17(e)(1) requires an employer to place a job order with the state workforce agency for 30 days, run two Sunday newspaper advertisements, and complete three additional recruitment steps chosen from a list that includes job fairs, the employer's own website, outside job search websites, on campus recruiting, trade organizations, and private employment firms. The content rules in 20 C.F.R. 656.17(f) require each newspaper or professional journal advertisement to name the employer, describe the vacancy specifically, state the geographic area, and "direct applicants to report or send resumes, as appropriate for the occupation, to the employer." Sending resumes is an expressly contemplated method.

What PERM does require is good faith. Under 20 C.F.R. 656.10(c), the employer certifies a list of conditions on the application under penalty of perjury, including that "the job opportunity does not involve unlawful discrimination by race, creed, color, national origin, age, sex, religion, handicap, or citizenship," that "the job opportunity has been and is clearly open to any U.S. worker," and that "the U.S. workers who applied for the job opportunity were rejected for lawful job-related reasons." The employer must also prepare a recruitment report under 20 C.F.R. 656.17(g)(1) describing the recruitment steps undertaken and the results achieved, the number of hires, and, if applicable, the number of U.S. workers rejected, categorized by the lawful job related reasons for those rejections.

So the alleged violation here was not a failure to follow a DOL checklist. It was the use of a lawful looking channel in a way the agencies say was chosen to produce a thin U.S. applicant pool. The releases spell out the standard in plain terms: during PERM recruitment, companies "cannot illegally discriminate on the basis of citizenship status or national origin by creating additional burdens for U.S. and American workers," by publishing advertisements that "disfavor, limit, specify, or otherwise discriminate against U.S. and American workers," or by using "processes that limit, segregate, or classify applicants in any way that tends to deprive U.S. and American applicants of employment opportunities."

This Fact Pattern Has a Paper Trail

Two documents make clear this was not a surprise theory.

The first is a November 2025 EEOC fact sheet, "Discrimination Against American Workers Is Against the Law," released as part of the agency's work with the Labor Department's Project Firewall. Among the examples of unlawful hiring evidence it lists is "subjecting U.S. workers to more laborious application methods than H-1B visa holders during the PERM labor certification process." The agency named this specific practice, in a public compliance document, roughly eleven months before the Instacart announcement. The same fact sheet adds that customer preference, lower labor cost, and beliefs that one national origin group is "more productive" do not excuse preferring foreign workers.

The second is the Civil Rights Division's executed 2023 settlement agreement with Apple Inc., which is published in full on justice.gov. There, the Immigrant and Employee Rights Section stated it had found reasonable cause to believe Apple "preferred workers holding temporary employment visas for PERM related positions based on their citizenship status instead of qualified and available U.S. applicants, in violation of 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(1)(B)." The described mechanics are nearly identical: Apple "did not advertise positions on its external job website and required all applicants to mail paper applications, as opposed to allowing electronic applications." Under that agreement Apple was to pay $6,750,000 in civil penalties plus back pay, distributed through an independent claims administrator the agency had to approve.

The Apple agreement is also a useful reminder about posture, because it says so explicitly. It records that the agreement "does not constitute and shall not be construed as an admission by Apple of any act in violation of 8 U.S.C. 1324b," and that Apple "vigorously disputes the findings and conclusions" and "maintains that it adhered to the recruitment steps required of the PERM program by the U.S. Department of Labor regulations."

The Posture: What Is Settled and What Is Not

The agencies' own language is careful, and ours should match it. The releases say the settlement "addresses allegations" that Instacart discriminated, while also saying the agencies "uncovered evidence" of intentional discrimination and that DOJ's investigation "found" the paper mailing requirement. Those are agency findings from agency investigations.

What has not happened: no court has heard the claims, no administrative law judge has entered an order under 8 U.S.C. 1324b(g), and no factfinder has determined liability. The published summary of the agreement says it resolves allegations and does not state that Instacart admitted anything. We have not located a full executed agreement or any public response from the company, so we cannot say whether this agreement contains an express non admission clause of the kind the Apple agreement carried.

What is settled: the payment obligations, the PERM process changes, the training, the policy revisions, and the monitoring, as described in the agencies' summary.

Analysis: Why This Matters

The following is analysis from the Recording Law Editorial Team.

The legal interest in this case is not the dollar figure. It is that the alleged violation lives entirely in process design. Nothing in the agencies' description involves a stated preference for visa holders in an advertisement, a slur, or a rejected qualified candidate. The theory is that a compliant looking recruitment channel can itself be the discriminatory act when an employer uses a harder channel for the audience it is legally required to test and an easier one for everyone else. Title VII already contains the words for that, in the "limit, segregate, or classify ... in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive" language of 42 U.S.C. 2000e-2(a)(2), and the INA reaches recruitment conduct because 28 C.F.R. 44.101(h) defines hiring to include the entire recruitment process.

The second notable feature is the joint structure. Because 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(2)(B) carves national origin out of the INA where Title VII covers it, a single recruitment practice aimed at U.S. workers can generate two distinct federal claims held by two different agencies. Settling with one would leave the other live. A joint resolution of the kind announced here closes both, and the agencies' releases present that as deliberate, with DOJ naming the Protecting U.S. Workers Initiative and the EEOC naming its Project Firewall partnership with the Labor Department.

Third, the remedial package is where the forward looking effect sits. Civil penalties are paid once. A requirement to post PERM openings on the public career website, accept electronic applications, and submit to a monitor and periodic reporting changes how the process runs for three years, the term the Civil Rights Division states for Instacart's training and monitoring requirements. For other employers reading the agreement summary, the practical takeaway is that the gap between a company's ordinary hiring channel and its PERM channel is now a documented enforcement signal. We are not predicting how any future case is resolved; we are noting what the agencies have said they are looking at and what they have published in advance about it.

Finally, the compensation design deserves a flag. Including deterred applicants, people who never applied, is harder to administer than paying identified rejected candidates, and it is why eligibility sits with a claims administrator rather than with a list. It also means the real reach of the fund will not be visible until that administrator starts its outreach.

How This Affects You

If you applied for an Instacart position between December 2023 and February 2026 and the application had to go through the mail, you are in the factual territory the agencies describe. That is not the same as being eligible, and no one reading a news article can tell you whether you are. Eligibility determinations belong to the claims administrator, which had not published its own contact details as of October 22, 2026. The agencies' stated interim step for anyone who believes they may be aggrieved is the Instacart@eeoc.gov address named in the releases.

More generally, federal charge deadlines are short and they do not wait for settlements in other matters. The EEOC states that a charge of discrimination generally must be filed within 180 calendar days of the discriminatory act, extended to 300 calendar days if a state or local agency enforces a law that prohibits employment discrimination on the same basis. The INA track has its own limit: under 8 U.S.C. 1324b(d)(3), no complaint may be filed about an unfair immigration-related employment practice occurring more than 180 days before the charge was filed with the Special Counsel. Back pay under that statute is further limited by 8 U.S.C. 1324b(g)(2)(C), which bars accrual from more than two years before the charge was filed.

For employers, the compliance question raised by this agreement is a documentation question, not a philosophical one. The PERM certification at 20 C.F.R. 656.10(c)(8) is that the job "has been and is clearly open to any U.S. worker," signed under penalty of perjury, and the recruitment report required by 20 C.F.R. 656.17(g)(1) has to give the number of U.S. workers rejected, categorized by the lawful job related reasons for those rejections. A channel that predictably yields almost no applicants is difficult to reconcile with either document.

If what happened to you was retaliation for raising the issue rather than the hiring decision itself, that is a different analysis. Both statutes have retaliation provisions, 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(5) on the immigration side and separate Title VII protections on the EEOC side, and our overview of federal and state whistleblower protections explains how those claims generally work. Workers facing immigration status pressure from an employer may also want to read what the law says about employer immigration threats.

This is general legal information, not legal advice. It covers federal United States hiring discrimination law and a single federal administrative settlement, and reflects sources verified on October 22, 2026. Laws change and this story is developing; consult a lawyer licensed in your jurisdiction about your specific situation.

Related articles

• Our guide to at-will employment and the limits on hiring and firing
• The EEOC suit over an "ONLY H-1B" job referral
• An earlier EEOC hiring discrimination settlement with a claims process
• When an employer uses immigration status as leverage
• How federal and state whistleblower protections fit together

---

Last updated: 2026-10-22. This is a developing story; details verified as of 2026-10-22.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is covered by the Instacart PERM settlement?

According to the October 20, 2026 DOJ and EEOC announcement, the fund covers people who applied to Instacart positions advertised as part of PERM recruitment and people the agencies call deterred applicants, affected from December 2023 to February 2026. A claims administrator determines who is actually eligible for back pay and compensatory damages.

How much money will an affected applicant receive?

Neither agency has said. The press releases describe a settlement fund of up to $4,000,000 and the Civil Rights Division's summary document describes a fund totaling $4,000,000, but no per person figure, group size, or payment guarantee appears in either document as of October 22, 2026.

What does deterred applicant mean here?

In this context it refers to someone who would have applied but was put off by the application method itself rather than by the job. The Civil Rights Division used the same concept in its 2023 PERM agreement with Apple, writing that less effective recruitment procedures deterred U.S. applicants from applying.

How do I contact someone about the Instacart settlement?

The DOJ and EEOC releases ask applicants and deterred applicants who believe they may be aggrieved to email Instacart@eeoc.gov until the claims administrator establishes its own contact email, so the agencies can share that information with the administrator. That email is an information channel to the agencies, not a claim form.

Is it illegal for an employer to require paper applications?

Not by itself. The Labor Department's PERM advertising rules at 20 C.F.R. 656.17(f)(2) require a newspaper or professional journal advertisement to direct applicants to report or send resumes, as appropriate for the occupation, to the employer, so a mailed resume is a method the regulation contemplates. The agencies' theory was that using a mail only channel for PERM advertised roles while accepting electronic applications everywhere else created additional burdens on U.S. workers, which they say violated 8 U.S.C. 1324b and Title VII.

Did Instacart admit to discrimination?

The one page summary the Civil Rights Division published says the agreement resolves allegations and does not state any admission, and no court or administrative law judge has adjudicated liability. We were unable to locate a full executed agreement or a public company statement as of October 22, 2026.

Which law protects U.S. workers from being passed over in favor of visa holders?

Two do. The Immigration and Nationality Act's anti-discrimination provision, 8 U.S.C. 1324b, covers citizenship status discrimination in hiring, which the implementing regulation at 28 C.F.R. 44.101(h) defines to include the entire recruitment, selection, and onboarding process, as well as in recruitment or referral for a fee by paid third-party recruiters, and Title VII, 42 U.S.C. 2000e-2, covers national origin discrimination including discrimination against American workers. Under 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(2)(B) the INA provision yields to Title VII on national origin.

How long do I have to file a discrimination charge?

The EEOC states that a charge generally must be filed within 180 calendar days of the discriminatory act, extended to 300 days if a state or local agency enforces a law that prohibits employment discrimination on the same basis. On the immigration side, 8 U.S.C. 1324b(d)(3) bars a complaint about a practice occurring more than 180 days before the charge was filed with the Special Counsel.