The Risks in Background Checks
The Clean Slate Act’s Impact on Employers
AGG Talks: Background Screening - Ban the Box and Fair Chance Hiring Laws: The Year in Review
Expungements: A Helping Hand for a Second Chance and New Opportunities
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
#WorkforceWednesday: COVID-19 Restrictions Tighten, NYC Fair Chance Act, Biden's Budget - Employment Law This Week®
How to Conduct Criminal Background Checks the Right Way
[WEBINAR] Labor & Employment Law: What Changed in 2017
"Ban The Box" And Other Laws Limiting An Employer's Use Of Criminal History
LXBN This Week Ep. 2: EEOC on Criminal Records & Transgender Discrimination, BP Oil Spill Arrest, AZ Immigration Law at SCOTUS
Hiring hourly workers, especially in high-volume sectors like retail, hospitality, healthcare, and construction, presents unique challenges. The demand for quick hiring can sometimes lead to shortcuts in the background...more
Independent contractors can pose safety and security risks as much as employees. Some go into customer homes. Others have access to personally identifiable information and proprietary business information. Some independent...more
A scary surprise is fun to encounter when you are in a haunted house at a Halloween event, but not so much fun when you are performing a background check on a potential employee. Even worse is finding out after the fact that...more
For many years, California employers have been subject to the state’s Fair Chance Act, which (in a nutshell) requires employers to...more
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
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has released an updated version of the "Summary of Your Rights Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act" notice that all employers must provide to employees before taking any adverse action...more
The continued filing of lawsuits against employers under the FCRA underscores the need for in-house counsel, Human Resources, and Talent Acquisition to comply with the statute, especially the “pre-adverse action” notice...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
Conducting criminal background checks on job candidates is a common practice for employers but one that raises a host of compliance concerns amid a series of federal, state, and local laws and regulations governing how and...more
A job applicant who didn’t disclose a felony conviction can’t sue her prospective employer under a federal background-check law for failing to provide proper notice before rescinding her offer, according to a recent decision...more
Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Spokeo, Inc. v. Robins, 578 U.S. 330 (2016), federal courts have continued to examine what is an injury in fact under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”). On April 4, 2022, the...more
Background check reports are an important – and in many cases essential – tool in making informed and responsible employment decisions. Gathering and using this information, however, carries legal obligations and...more
As we predicted four years ago, class action lawsuits against employers under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) continue to spike, including class actions targeting background check disclosures....more
More and more organizations are conducting background checks on applicants and employees. Whether it’s to minimize safety and security risks, increase protection against fraud and theft, or required by law for your industry,...more
Under federal law, an employer that conducts a background check for an applicant or employee must first provide written notice, also known as a disclosure, to that individual – but recent court decisions demonstrate how...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
Changes to Philadelphia law will further restrict employers’ use and reliance on applicant, current employee, and independent contractor background information and affect the employee application and employee management...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: On March 23, 2021, Governor J.B. Pritzker signed into law SB 1480, which includes amendments to the Illinois Human Rights Act prohibiting employment discrimination based on an individual’s conviction...more
Illinois employers have long been prohibited from using arrest records as the basis for employment decisions under Section 103 of the Illinois Human Rights Act (“IHRA”). ...more
Background check compliance has been a technical minefield for years. Federal, state and local requirements differ, meaning that multistate employers have a lot to keep track of....more
Illinois has enacted new limitations and procedural obligations on the use of criminal conviction records in employment decisions. Governor J.B. Pritzker signed the bill amending the Illinois Human Rights Act (IHRA) on...more
For years, Philadelphia has maintained ordinances substantially restricting employers’ use of criminal record and credit histories in employment screening. These regulations are in addition to, not in lieu of, the federal...more
Addressing a recurring issue bedeviling the background screening industry, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit confirmed on December 4 that it is not inaccurate for a consumer reporting agency (CRA) to report a...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