How to Conduct Criminal Background Checks the Right Way
Employers commonly conduct background checks on prospective employees in various areas that they may think relevant when deciding whether to hire an individual for a job. Yet, federal, state, and local laws are increasingly...more
Background checks are a great idea—unless you fail to do them correctly. Mistakes can be costly. One online retailer paid $5 million to settle a class action filed by 454,000 job applicants alleging violations of the Fair...more
Last month, the new chair of the EEOC, Charlotte A. Burrows, was the keynote speaker at a conference regarding new research on criminal recidivism....more
The California Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA), as amended in 2018, restricts a covered employer’s ability to make hiring decisions based on an individual’s criminal history, including but not limited to court records...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: On September 15, 2020, Hawaii Governor David Y. Ige signed Senate Bill 051, which narrows the scope of convictions that employers can use for hiring and other employment-related decisions. The new law is...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: As the number of class actions alleging FCRA violations continues to skyrocket, it is critical for California employers to understand the basics of all laws affecting employment screening programs. This...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: St. Louis has become the third locality in Missouri to enact a “Ban the Box” law, joining Kansas City and Columbia. With a January 1, 2021 effective date, covered employers should begin taking steps to...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: After six years of litigation, on November 18, 2019, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) announced a multimillion-dollar settlement with a national employer, which resolved litigation that...more
Employers began to rethink how they obtain authorization and retrieve background and credit checks for new employees after the Ninth Circuit’s decision in Gilberg v. California Check Cashing Stores, LLC, 913 F.3d 1169, 1177...more
Employers should continue to exercise caution and care in drafting their criminal record screening policies. A recent settlement by Dollar General underscores this point, even though it comes on the heels of the Fifth...more
Q: Are there certain rules an employer must follow when conducting background checks or employees and prospective employees? ...more
Employers that use criminal record-screening policies must continue to be vigilant about compliance with all applicable laws and should know that the EEOC’s scrutiny of such policies, while perhaps scaled back, has not ended....more
Employers that use criminal record screening policies must continue to be vigilant about compliance with all applicable laws. Following a multi-million dollar settlement by a leading retailer earlier this year, a recent...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: California is rife with regulation of how employers may obtain and consider background check information for use in hiring and personnel decisions. ...more
In this episode of The Proskauer Brief, senior counsel Harris Mufson and associate Michelle Gyves discuss the main laws governing background checks for employers. We will discuss how employers can utilize the federal Fair...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: In the last three years, employers have seen a sharp increase in the number of employment class actions under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). Most of the reported cases involve challenges to the...more
Employees – and unsuccessful applicants for employment – are increasingly asserting claims under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) for violations arising out of background checks conducted by third party credit reporting...more
In 1998, Hawaii became the first state to “ban the box,” prohibiting private employers from inquiring about a candidate’s criminal history until the employer has made a conditional offer. It was not for another 12 years...more
This summer the world’s greatest athletes are competing for Olympic gold. In order to win, these athletes must follow a strict set of rules to prevent deductions and disqualifications. When employers compete for the best...more
Employers face an increasing number of laws that limit when an employer may ask for and use an applicant's criminal history. "Ban the Box" laws prohibit questions about criminal history on the initial application. In...more
On December 10, 2015, Philadelphia’s Mayor, Michael A. Nutter, signed an amendment to the city’s ban-the-box legislation (“Amendment”) that places increased restrictions on employers during the hiring process....more
FTC Offers Employers Lesson in FCRA Compliance—And Limited Exceptions - Why it matters: A California employer recently received a lesson in Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) compliance from the Federal Trade...more
We were pleased to host a program on September 28, 2015 on New York City’s two new background check laws, the Stop Credit Discrimination in Employment Act and the Fair Chance Act. Paul Keefe, Supervising Attorney at the NYC...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
On June 29, 2015, Mayor de Blasio signed the Fair Chance Act, a new law that generally prohibits New York City employers from discriminating against job applicants with a criminal record and that prohibits inquiries about...more