The Law at Work: Legal Checks on Background Checks
Late last month the California Supreme Court ruled that, where a background check goes beyond requesting an applicant’s credit records, to seek information through personal interviews or other means about an applicant’s character, an employer must satisfy the requirements of the state’s Investigative Consumer Reporting Agencies Act (ICRAA). The high court’s core holding was that the ICRAA was not rendered unconstitutionally vague as applied to employment background checks because it partially overlaps with the state’s Consumer Credit Reporting Agencies Act. In his the Law at Work column in the San Diego Union-Tribune, Shareholder Dan Eaton examines this ruling, as well as ways to avoid violating the ICRAA. According to Dan, an employer generally should obtain written authorization from an applicant to conduct a background check as part of complying with the broadest applicable requirements of state law. If an applicant declines to authorize a background check, move on.
Read the full article here.