Tag: CA

CA Bill Would Reduce Processing Time for Criminal Background Checks A significant slowdown in California State Courts processing criminal record searches has become a problem for many employers, and background check industry groups are responding with a full-court press. The slowdown has occurred due to the decision by the court of appeals in the All of Us or None v. Hamrick case last year. After this decision, companies could no longer depend on background check companies to supply them with criminal record searches on a reliable basis in certain counties, such as Los Angeles. This decision was not actually about an employment disagreement; however, it still had a significant effect on businesses’ ability to obtain background checks by interfering with the way background check providers match the subject of the background check to the court records. The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) requires that businesses carefully match any candidates they are running a background screening on to the court records. Senate Bill (SB) 1262 should clear up the slowdown if it passes by permitting access to the type of identifiers that background screening companies tend to use to match candidates to records, such as the date of birth. The court of appeal making the Hamrick decision stated that it wanted to protect the privacy of individuals involved in criminal proceedings. This court banned a state court from permitting people to search its electronic criminal case index by using someone’s driver’s license number or birth date. This impacted background check companies seeing that they search these indexes when conducting most of their criminal background screenings in California State Courts. The ruling by the appeals court affected most of the state courts in California since it was based on state law. The plaintiffs in the Hamrick case succeeded in forcing the Riverside Superior Court to comply with Rule 2.507, which places limits on public access to personally-identifying information such as birth dates. After the court decision, a number of other county courts in California limited public access to certain identifiers as well. This has caused considerable difficulties for background screening companies in California since the FCRA requires these companies to do more than simply match a person’s name to a criminal record. Instead, they are required to use an identifier such as a birth date to match the person to the record. However, background checks can be difficult to perform since this is now difficult to perform. This can make it difficult to fill some jobs, especially jobs where the employee works with vulnerable people. However, if SB 1262 is passed, background check companies may again be able to match results using identifiers, such as birth dates and/or driver’s license numbers. Employer Takeaways Should SB 1262 pass background checks, companies should be able to complete criminal background checks in a much more timely manner. However, until then, employers will still have to deal with prolonged background checks. This could make working with an attorney experienced in employment law a good idea to handle the situation in the best way possible. Sources Littler Publications

Tag: CA

CA Bill Would Reduce Processing Time for Criminal Background Checks

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