Related sections: Terms of Service §§ 14–17 | 8 U.S.C. § 1324a(b)(5) | IER Employer Guidance
ZipID presents identity verification findings to your authorized representative. Your organization makes all employment eligibility determinations. ZipID does not make hiring decisions on your behalf.
What "decision-support" means
ZipID is built as a decision-support tool. This means the platform gathers, processes, and presents identity verification information — biometric liveness results, facial comparison outcomes, document authenticity assessments, and fraud indicators — to the employer's authorized representative. The representative then reviews that information and makes the employment eligibility determination independently.
ZipID does not tell you to hire or not hire someone. It does not generate a pass/fail hiring recommendation. It surfaces findings. Your organization acts on them.
This is not a technical limitation — it is an intentional design choice rooted in federal law and ZipID's Terms of Service.
Why this design matters legally
Federal law prohibits over-verification and document abuse
The Immigration and Nationality Act, at 8 U.S.C. § 1324b, prohibits employers from requesting more or different identity documents than the Form I-9 process requires, or from using an employee's national origin, citizenship status, or appearance as a basis for treating them differently during employment eligibility verification. This is called document abuse or discriminatory over-verification, and it is enforced by DOJ's Immigrant and Employee Rights Section (IER).
If an automated system were to automatically reject or flag workers at higher rates based on patterns correlated with national origin or citizenship status — even unintentionally — the employer using that system could face an IER investigation. The system's output would be the employer's action.
ZipID's design protects you from this risk
Because ZipID presents findings rather than making decisions, your authorized representative remains the decision-maker at every step. This means:
• If a liveness check does not pass, your representative reviews the result and determines the next step — not ZipID.
• If a document is flagged as potentially fraudulent, your representative must conduct an independent, good-faith review before taking any adverse action.
• The employee always has the opportunity to present alternative documentation or address a result before any employment decision is made.
• ZipID's outputs are informational. They do not constitute a determination of any individual's employment eligibility, identity, or legal status.
This workflow is required by ZipID's Terms of Service (Sections 14 and 15) and is also consistent with guidance from the Department of Justice's IER on employer best practices for electronic I-9 systems.
Your obligations as an employer
Using ZipID does not transfer your legal compliance obligations to ZipID. Under federal law and ZipID's Terms of Service, you are responsible for:
1. Reviewing ZipID's outputs through a designated reviewer — an HR user or authorized representative — who applies independent judgment.
2. Never taking an adverse employment action based solely on an automated ZipID output without conducting a good-faith review of the relevant facts.
3. Giving any employee whose liveness check did not pass, or whose document was flagged, a reasonable opportunity to address the result or present alternative acceptable documentation.
4. Applying ZipID's verification process consistently to all new hires — not selectively based on any individual's appearance, national origin, or citizenship status.
5. Ensuring that all users in your ZipID account — HR users and authorized representatives alike — understand and comply with these obligations.
These requirements are not optional. They are embedded in ZipID's Terms of Service (Sections 14–17) and accepted by your Workspace Owner on behalf of your organization at the time of account creation.
What this means in practice
Here is how the decision-support design plays out in common scenarios:
Scenario 1: Liveness check does not pass
ZipID notifies your reviewer that the liveness check was not completed successfully. The reviewer notes any relevant context and — before taking any action — gives the applicant a reasonable opportunity to complete the check again or present alternative List A or List B/C documents. The reviewer documents the outcome. ZipID's audit trail records the action and timestamp.
Scenario 2: Document flagged as potentially fraudulent
ZipID flags a presented document with fraud indicators and surfaces the specific signals to your reviewer. The reviewer does not take immediate adverse action. Instead, they conduct a good-faith review — which may include giving the applicant the opportunity to present a different acceptable document — before making any employment decision. The reviewer's determination, not ZipID's flag, is the basis for any action taken.
Scenario 3: All checks pass
ZipID confirms that liveness detection was successful, the facial comparison matches the presented document, and no document fraud indicators were found. Your authorized representative reviews the results, completes Section 2 of the Form I-9 within the required timeframe, and the record is stored in ZipID's compliant electronic system. The hiring decision remains yours.
How the decision-support workflow works in practice
ZipID's decision-support design applies uniformly across all verification workflows — whether an HR user is conducting an in-person review at a store location or an authorized representative is completing Section 2 remotely. In both cases, ZipID presents the same verification findings through the same in-platform interface, and the reviewer applies independent judgment before any employment determination is made.
All reviewer actions — in-person or remote — are completed within the ZipID application. Every step is timestamped, user-attributed, and stored as part of the auditable I-9 record. No outsourced agent network is involved. No external party reviews your employees' documents or makes findings on ZipID's behalf.
The decision-support design is not a special mode or optional setting — it is how ZipID works for every user, every verification, every time. HR users and authorized representatives interact with the same workflow and are subject to the same employer obligations under ZipID's Terms of Service (Sections 14–17).
Key references
• ZipID Terms of Service, Sections 14–17: Employer Responsibility for Hiring Decisions; Anti-Discrimination Compliance; Limitation on Liability for Identity Analysis Outputs; Employer Indemnification
• 8 U.S.C. § 1324a(b)(5): Prohibition on document abuse and discriminatory over-verification
• 8 U.S.C. § 1324b: INA anti-discrimination provisions
• DOJ Immigrant and Employee Rights Section (IER): ier.gov
• ICE/DOJ Joint Fact Sheet on Electronic I-9 Software Programs (December 2023): Employer responsibility for system compliance
This article provides general informational guidance about ZipID's design and employer obligations. It does not constitute legal advice. For questions about your specific compliance obligations, consult qualifi