The Tel Aviv Regional Labor Court ruled last week that Bloomberg P.L. and its Israeli branch must pay veteran journalist Amir Mazeruch about NIS 360,000 after canceling his employment. The court found that background checks uncovered no negative information beyond Facebook posts from 2012 and X, formerly Twitter, posts from May 2021, including the words “Nigga” and “Bitches.”
Mazeruch had negotiated in 2022 for a senior role as head of Bloomberg’s Israel office. He signed the employment agreement and sent it back, and in April 2022 Bloomberg told him the offer had been approved for a June 2022 start, subject to his signatures, reference checks, and background screening. About three weeks before he was due to begin, Bloomberg informed him that the checks had revealed the old social media posts and later canceled the offer.
The court said the companies failed to justify searching roughly a decade back through the plaintiff’s social media and using those results against him. It wrote that in an era when online records can last forever, the question of a person’s right to be forgotten arises, and said the defendants could not justify attributing those old posts to him, especially when they were short remarks online rather than an article or opinion piece published under his name.
According to Mazeruch, he was shocked, did not remember the posts, and later explained their context. He said the 2012 Facebook material was satirical, made in a discussion with Jewish comedians, and the 2021 tweet responded to anti-Israeli, antisemitic activity abroad during Operation Guardian of the Walls. He also said a Bloomberg representative told him deleting the posts would help, so he removed them and closed his Facebook account, only to be told at the end of May that the offer was canceled immediately.
Bloomberg argued that the offer was conditional on passing background checks and that the posts did not match its values, especially for a senior role requiring personal example. The court nonetheless held that a binding employment contract had already been formed and that Bloomberg acted in bad faith by making the checks only after signing the contract and then terminating him over pre-employment posts, some written about 10 years earlier. It awarded about NIS 307,000 for financial harm, NIS 50,000 for pain and suffering, and NIS 54,000 in legal fees.
