The Risks in Background Checks
Current Trends in FCRA Litigation - The Consumer Finance Podcast
AGG Talks: Background Screening - Ban the Box and Fair Chance Hiring Laws: The Year in Review
AGG Talks: Background Screening - Redaction of Identifiers by the Courts Update, Breaking News from California
AGG Talks: Background Screening - Redaction of Identifiers by the Courts in Michigan and California Pose Challenges for Background Checks
In 2012, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued enforcement guidance on employers’ use of criminal background checks in the hiring process. The EEOC concluded that indiscriminate use of such checks has a disparate...more
No legal authority to issue its Enforcement Guidance! In February 2018, I wrote about a federal court decision that enjoined (prohibited) the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from taking any action to enforce its 2012...more
Courts have ruled that sweeping and overbroad employer-initiated disqualification policies must be struck absent business justification. But where is the line on what constitutes an overbroad and impermissible policy when...more
In EEOC v. DolGenCorp, LLC d/b/a Dollar General, No. 13-CV-4307 (N.D. Ill.), a case we blogged about previously here, Judge Andrea Wood of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois recently decided several...more
On September 8, 2015, BMW Manufacturing Co., LLC and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) entered into a consent decree ending the EEOC’s disparate impact lawsuit over BMW’s use of criminal background...more
I was going to skip past this opinion from the District of Maryland until I realized that it started with a reference to a classic country song and, therefore, it immediately moved up my list and became worthy of a closer...more
After several high-profile setbacks in disparate impact discrimination lawsuits challenging criminal record screening policies, the EEOC has entered into a settlement (consent decree) in one of its few remaining cases, a...more
Earlier this week, it was announced that BMW Manufacturing Co. and the EEOC had entered into a Consent Decree, resolving one of three high profile suits over a company's use of background checks in the hire process that had...more
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has been ordered to pay $938,771 in attorneys’ fees to Freeman after getting its clock cleaned in that lawsuit it filed over background checks and disparate impact based on race and...more
The EEOC recently announced its $2.8 million settlement with Target Corp. of discrimination claims arising out of the use of employment tests in the hiring process. Discriminatory pre-employment tests like the ones at issue...more
Is the government really telling employers that they are not allowed to disqualify an applicant because of past criminal activity? In a word, yes. That is increasingly becoming the case on the state level and has been the...more
In EEOC v. DolGenCorp, LLC d/b/a Dollar General, No. 13-CV-4307 (N.D. Ill. May 5, 2015), Judge Andrea R. Wood of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois decided several discovery issues that have become...more
This past weekend, while college basketball teams across America finished up their conference tournaments, 64 employment law issues played in the first round of our tournament, and boy did it live up to the hype. Filled with...more
As part of an employer's business in providing integrated services for high level events, it commenced background checks of all prospective employees, including credit checks for positions dealing with "credit sensitive"...more
Several years ago, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission set discriminatory use of criminal and financial background checks as a top enforcement priority. These cases are brought under the disparate impact theory,...more
Last week, the Federal Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld a district court’s decision granting summary judgment to an employer accused by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) of racial bias in its...more
The EEOC has taken a lot of heat on its controversial stance of aggressively litigating adverse impact cases involving background checks. In April, 2012, the EEOC issued a new enforcement guidance seeking to curtail the uses...more
The latest chapter in the ongoing saga of employment-related criminal background checks in the United States has been written, and one of the authors had some particularly strong words for the Equal Employment Opportunity...more
On April 25, 2012, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued its Enforcement Guidance on the Consideration of Arrest and Conviction Records in Employment Decisions Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of...more
Last Tuesday, a Magistrate Judge in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York granted partial class certification in a case where plaintiffs allege that the United States Census Bureau used arrest...more
The EEOC suffered a major setback on April 9th when the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed summary judgment in the highly watched background check case of EEOC v. Kaplan Higher Education Corporation, et al. The Sixth...more
As we recently reported at our annual employment law update, additional restrictions are being placed on the use of background checks in light of the potential for disparate impact and invasion of the right to privacy....more
On November 4, 2013, the State of Texas filed a lawsuit against the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) regarding the agency's April 2012 guidance on the use of criminal background checks in the employment...more
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) usually forces employers who are subject to Title VII to play defense. The State of Texas, however, has upended that approach. On November 4, 2013, Texas filed a federal...more
As we’ve blogged about before, the EEOC has become more aggressive over the past few years in scrutinizing employer use of criminal background and credit checks. While federal anti-discrimination laws do not expressly...more