Compliance News Flash

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Arnall Golden Gregory LLP is pleased to provide you with the Compliance News Flash, which includes current news briefs relevant to background screening, immigration and data privacy, for the benefit and interest of our clients as well as employers and consumer reporting agencies generally.

  • On day 28, the partial government shutdown continues. The House of Representatives passed by voice vote a six-week funding bill to open the government through February 28th. House Republicans argued that they were denied the recorded vote that they requested and the voice vote was ultimately voided. The House will take a roll call vote next Wednesday on the short-term funding bill. The bill has little chance of traction unless something changes over the weekend. The White House has threatened to veto any temporary funding bill unless it includes money for a border wall, and Senate Republican leaders have made clear that they will not put any bill up for a vote in the U.S. Senate that does not have the President’s approval.
  • E-Verify, the electronic employment eligibility verification system, is still unavailable during the partial government shutdown. E-Verify is operated by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, under the Department of Homeland Security, for which funding lapsed on December 22nd. Employers are still required to complete the employment eligibility verification form (the “Form I-9”) and will need to create new cases within the system once E-Verify is back online. Read my advice for employers here. Read more about E-Verify services during the shutdown here
  • The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is getting hit right and left. First, the partial government shutdown is affecting the agency. The FTC office is closed, all events are postponed, and website information and social media will not be updated until the government reopens. Read more about which FTC services are still available and which are temporarily shut down here. And then, a coalition of 16 consumer rights advocacy groups want to completely shut the agency down. The consumer groups, including Public Citizen, the Consumer Federation of America, and the Center for Digital Democracy, argue that the agency successfully safeguards consumers and promotes competition, but that it fails as a privacy regulator. The groups want an entirely new data protection authority, one with rulemaking authority and the resources to enforce federal privacy legislation. Click here to read the groups’ privacy policy proposal.
  • Even while employees of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) are furloughed during the shutdown, the National Background Investigations Bureau (NBIB) continues to work on the 600,000 case backlog of security clearance investigations. NBIB is funded from fees that it charges other federal agencies to do its background investigations work, so it is able to keep operations running during the shutdown. Read more here.

  • The Association of National Advertisers (ANA) asked the California attorney general (AG) in a public forum to clarify the state’s new privacy law, the California Consumer Protection Act (CCPA). The ANA is seeking regulations that are friendlier to the marketing industry, including narrowing the definition of personal information. The California AG is currently holding public forums to gather input on potential CCPA regulations. Read my earlier post about the CCPA and its public forums here. Read the news story about the ANA’s public testimony here.
  • Cisive, a global provider of compliance-driven human capital management and risk management solutions, recently acquired PreCheck, a health care industry provider of background screening.

DISCLAIMER: Because of the generality of this update, the information provided herein may not be applicable in all situations and should not be acted upon without specific legal advice based on particular situations.

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