‘Fair Chance Act’ may require federal government to ‘ban the box’

Fair Chance Act,” would prevent all three branches of the federal government from asking job applicants questions about their criminal records on a government job application. The Fair Chance Act would prevent background checks from being conducted until the government is ready to offer a position to the applicant. The bill would “ban the box”…

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BMW to pay $1.6 million in EEOC discrimination case consent decree

has signed a consent decree with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and agreed to pay $1.6 million out to 56 claimants. According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, those claimants may have been discriminated against when BMW took adverse action against them due to stringent criminal record checks conducted after they had already been hired.…

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ACLU petitions for ‘ban the box’ executive action for federal jobs

has begun petitioning the government to stop including questions about applicants’ criminal records on federal job applications. Recently, President Obama spoke at the NAACP’s annual conference, where he asked Congress to pass federal “ban the box” laws and prevent criminal background checks from being conducted until later in the employment process. According to the ACLU…

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Oregon aims to ‘ban the box’

passed a statewide “ban the box” law, which would prevent employers from asking job applicants if they have a criminal record prior to an interview or — sans interview — a conditional offer of employment. Most employers in the state would be required to remove any questions about a candidate’s criminal history from its job…

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Ohio: State databases lacked thousands of county criminal records

It was recently discovered that, for months, several counties in Ohio were having computer issues that prevented counties from providing arrest and criminal disposition records to a statewide database that law-enforcement officers use when making traffic stops. This miscommunication caused a lack of complete records for state and city police, and had the errors not…

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Georgia and Virginia consider ban-the-box legislation

Gov. Nathan Deal signed an Executive Order to remove criminal history questions from job applications in the state of Georgia. This move makes Georgia the fourteenth state in the U.S. to pass statewide ban-the-box legislation. (Both the city of Atlanta and Fulton County already had ban-the-box policies in place.) “[Ban-the-box] policies allow returning citizens an…

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NYC considers ban-the-box legislation more stringent than most for employers

In mid-December, the New York City Council introduced a proposal for the city’s own ban-the-box laws, just months after it introduced a bill that would prevent city employers from using credit checks against job candidates. (That bill is still being debated.) Over the previous years, employers in the state have not been able to refuse…

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Will your state enact ban-the-box laws in 2015?

In 2014, several states and metro areas instated laws that prohibit public employers from immediately disqualifying candidates that carry a criminal record. An employee criminal history disclosure is no longer required on initial job applications in Washington D.C., New Jersey, and Delaware, all of which passed ban-the-box laws this year, as did cities in New…

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No Bad Santa: Background checks prevent problems for employers, parents alike

Many retail stores are already busting out the holiday music and cheery decór, and retailers and organizations are already going about hiring holiday helpers. While any business would do well to screen its holiday help — after all, businesses are more likely to be robbed by employees than shoplifters — it’s a different story altogether…

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