Pay transparency law supporters have argued successfully that there is a compelling interest in closing gender and racial wage gaps and that salary range information can be mandated in job listings for that purpose. What's the compelling interest in this case that allows the government to control speech?
Same as how false price advertising, or I don't know, say you kept calling customer support but never had any problems could start to look like abuse.
Or squatting a business parking lot, you can always say, I eventually might need something from the store and intend to buy from it. I think they'd still have you towed and your argument would fail.
Fraud or specifically false advertisement is not protected by the First Amendment. 15 USC 52 and ff.
> What's the compelling interest in this case that allows the government to control speech?
Ghost job postings negatively impact interstate commerce.
if you hire rarely, same thing, if you can demonstrate that it takes a long time to find the right candidate. or, you could be requested to pause posts.
to handle a possible confusion about multiple listings, each job could have some kind of ID, in any case you wouldn't have multiple job posts in the same listing.
You could also argue there is loss to other companies listing real postings, as those fake ones add noise and people might miss their posting and not apply, causing them delays in filling their position.
Plus, if the ghost jobs are to appear to be growing to investors, or to satisfy regulators to justify internal positions or foreign hiring, now there is harm to investors or false compliance to regulations.
And I'd also say, the misrepresentation of demand, might lead people to pursue education in some careers and upskill thinking there is a lot of jobs for those skills, that would be a pretty hefty financial loss if they were mislead.
Sure, people wasting time applying to ghost jobs has a societal and economic cost, but what is the impact of government regulation of freely advertising job postings?
How does that stack up against the compliance cost of ensuring all of these regulations are being met so the company aren't fined, and the loss of legitimate postings to all of the places they would normally be posted to due to those regulatory cost?
The government has no business to be restricting speech in this manner.
The org chart is dynamic and is affected constantly by changing priority, changing budgets, promotions and departures, and the talent you're attracting. You can't effectively staff at scale under a rule that 1 job listing = 1 box in an org chart. Or at least I've not seen it done - I'd appreciate counter examples :-)
I appreciate your optimism regarding the nature of these postings, but I've seen at multiple companies them doing exactly what they describe in the article - fake job postings to improve their appearance to investors, fake job postings to justify H1B positions, etc. Every time I was at a company that got bought by private equity, the former appeared in huge numbers. As soon as we got acquired, in preparation for downsizing, the latter appeared in huge numbers. So you'll forgive me if "managing job hard :(" doesn't land for those of us who are applying for those jobs that don't exist.
Of course, I'm assuming companies with actual positions to fill would gain an advantage here, but the whole recruiting industry is so broken, I'm not sure.
Either way, the true ghost listings - positions that are box-ticker listings for internal candidates or H1Bs are pretty awful.
what does that mean? if you are hiring you describe the qualifications that you are looking for. if you have a range of qualifications, you say so. if it is not a specific job, then don't describe it as such. i'd happily apply to a listing that doesn't advertise a specific role as long as my qualifications match.
if candidates come to the wrong conclusion, then maybe the job description was not clear about that.
i can see the problem with a broad listing that could be a match for anyone from junior and up, but we are talking about changing laws, so this could be taken into account.
Umm, no? There are plenty of times when I've had roles posted that we interviewed candidates who met the written requirements (e.g., degrees, years of experience, etc) but did not pass our interview loops. It's very hard to prove a negative.
If move cross country because the job market in an area looks really good, only there aren't actually any jobs, what is the cost to me in the end?
This might suck for companies but sadly their peers made it necessary. Corporations keep telling us they will do the bare minimum of good behavior required by law and instead focus solely on return. Don't be surprised that we are now adjusting to that now that previous norms have been thrown out.
Regarding First Amendment conflicts with commercial speech, the Supreme Court described its four-step analysis in Central Hudson Gas & Elec. v. Public Svc. Comm'n, 447 U.S. 557 (1980) (stating “For commercial speech to come within the First Amendment, it at least must concern lawful activity and not be misleading.”) Hence, the FTC Division of Advertising Practices (DAP) <https://www.ftc.gov/about-ftc/bureaus-offices/bureau-consume...> has survived legal scrutiny of its enforcement authority due to its compelling interest in fair public markets.
As the Congressional Research Service pointed out, FTC enforcement actions regarding ghost jobs would be difficult, since employer intent is not easily discoverable and consumer harm not easily quantifiable. On the other hand, “While employers generally do not have a legal duty to respond to job applicants, differing responses based on protected characteristics could violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or other employment laws.” page 2, <https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/IF/PDF/IF1297...>
For instance, if an employer used job postings to hire from certain countries or age groups, this would likely violate Title VII since national origin and age are protected classes under Title VII, eg Mobley v Workday (where plaintiffs argue the Workday job postings platform violated Title VII) <https://www.pleasantonweekly.com/courts/2025/08/21/judge-ord...>
If they were advertising for labor, this wouldn't be an issue. The whole problem is that they are not trying to fill the position (or even have a position open).
Value judgments are an impossible thing to adjudicate. Though people try them anyway, with lots of unjust results.
Basically, they were arguing that "speech is money". The court ruled against that, and reaffirmed that speech in itself is always protected by the first amendment, regardless of who may benefit from it or what resources were allocated to facilitating it.
>>> Umm, no? There are plenty of times when I've had roles posted that we interviewed candidates who met the written requirements (e.g., degrees, years of experience, etc) but did not pass our interview loops. It's very hard to prove a negative.
>> if they passed the written requirements you should have interviewed them.
That is the point of my anecdote; we did interview them. And yet, we did not hire them, for a variety of reasons. For example, they may not have passed the interview. Or a reference check may have raised concerns. Or we may have hired another candidate whom we also interviewed and who did better.
Your implication, that they should have an easy and presumptively correct right to sue (and win) unless we can "demonstrate ... that the candidate was not qualified," is extremely expensive. It can easily cost 10's or 100's of thousands of dollars to defend a lawsuit.
i am only talking about the case where a company is collecting resumes but never interviewing anyone. or rejecting everyone they interview but skipping over qualified candidates they could interview but don't without a good reason.
i haven't even thought about the case where candidates pass an interview but the position still does not get filled despite that. that's probably also something to think about, but while you seem to keep talking about candidates you interviewed, until now i have only been talking about candidates you did not interview.
and again, all of this is only relevant if you are not actually filling the position, despite having found qualified candidates.