> The Los Angeles case began after three employees who identify as “Caucasian” claimed in a lawsuit that Cognizant made a practice of giving preference to South Asians in employment decisions. The plaintiffs alleged they were terminated after being “benched” with no work for five weeks and then replaced by “visa-ready” workers from India set to be deployed to US projects and assignments.

This is apparently a NASDAQ traded company with a market cap of nearly $38 billion (https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/CTSH/). It looks like they've placed H-1B holders at Bay Area employers ranging from Google, Meta and Apple to PG&E, Kaiser Permanente and Walmart.

I get that this company may be exploiting loopholes in the visa system or acting in unethical ways to import workers. But assuming those workers are legally able to work in America, is it really illegal to replace existing workers with cheaper ones? Isn't that a freedom employers have? How could that be considered discrimination based on ethnicity? That seems like a judgment based on the outcomes (equity) rather than evidence of discrimination based on race (as opposed to the cost of labor).

The lawsuit itself seems to be making a case based on "disparate impact" rather than clear evidence of discrimination: “Cognizant has used policies and practices related to hiring, promotion, and termination of individuals that have had a disparate impact on the basis of national origin and race (harming those who are not of South Asian race or Indian national origin) that are neither job-related for the positions at issue nor consistent with business necessity”.