Written By ESR News Blog Editor Thomas Ahearn In January 2021, the City of Memphis, Tennessee, announced a partnership with grocery store chain Kroger to provide job opportunities to ex-offenders with prior criminal records who graduate from second chance programs to help reduce the rate of recidivism, according to a news report from FOX13 in …
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Written By ESR News Blog Editor Thomas Ahearn The New York City Council has amended the Fair Chance Act (FCA) that prohibits most employers in the “Big Apple” from inquiring into the criminal records of job applicants until after a conditional job offer to expand employment protections. The amendments became law on January 10, 2021, …
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Written By ESR News Blog Editor Thomas Ahearn On January 28, 2021, the City of Lakeland, Florida, announced the implementation of a “Ban the Box” process to remove questions about prior criminal records of job applicants from applications, and the new process took full effect on February 1, 2021, according to a news post on …
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Written By ESR News Blog Editor Thomas Ahearn On January 20, 2021, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney signed three bills – Bill No. 200413, Bill No. 200479, and Bill No. 200614 – that amended Philadelphia’s Fair Criminal Record Screening Standards (FCRSS) and credit ban ordinances to expand coverage, eliminate exceptions, and change certain required procedures. Bill …
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Written By Employment Screening Resources® (ESR) The accuracy of job applicant criminal records used by employers and consumer reporting agencies (CRAs) to conduct background checks will become a new area of litigation filed over alleged violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) that regulates background screening, according to the “ESR Top Ten Background Check …
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Written By ESR News Blog Editor Thomas Ahearn The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) conducted a record high 39.7 million firearm background checks for gun purchases in 2020, according to statistics from the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) that checks for the criminal records of people who may be disqualified from receiving firearms. …
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Written By ESR News Blog Editor Thomas Ahearn On December 3, 2020, a class action lawsuit was filed in federal court that claimed the background check process of New York Life Insurance Company that allegedly denied jobs due to past arrests not resulting in convictions was discriminatory and disproportionately harmed Black job applicants, ClassAction.org reported. …
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Written By ESR News Blog Editor Thomas Ahearn Signed into law by Governor Roy Cooper on June 25, 2020, the North Carolina Second Chance Act (Senate Bill 562) is a new law that took effect on December 1, 2020, and will expand who may qualify for expungements – the process by which a criminal record …
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Written By ESR News Blog Editor Thomas Ahearn In November 2020, Ohio’s capital city, Columbus, and the city of Dayton filed a lawsuit that claimed a division of the state attorney general’s (AG) office failed to report criminal conviction information into state and federal background check databases that left them “dangerously deficient,” Courthouse News Service …
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Written By ESR News Blog Editor Thomas Ahearn On November 5, 2020, the Arkansas Supreme Court released its opinion on a lawsuit filed by the Professional Background Screening Association (PBSA) in 2018 against a Clerk of the District Court in Benton County, Arkansas, that upheld a Circuit Court Judge’s decision requiring that clerk to release …
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