Government Abandons Current "No Match" Rule Harmful to Legal Workers

The lawsuit was brought by the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Immigration Law Center (NILC) and labor groups to block the proposed "no match" rule which would require employers to penalize or fire U.S. citizens and legal workers whose social security numbers don't match up with the Social Security Administration (SSA) database. The lawsuit charges that the SSA database is fundamentally flawed and error-prone, and that the rule would result in the firing of countless legal workers as well as discrimination against those who look or sound "foreign."

Last month, U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer issued a preliminary order stopping the government from enforcing the proposed rule – which would affect more than eight million workers – finding that it would cause irreparable harm to both innocent workers and employers.