Third Thursday--C&M's October Labor & Employment Update: Conducting Background Checks

Please join us for the next edition of Third Thursday – Crowell & Moring’s Labor and Employment Update, a webinar series dedicated to helping our clients stay on top of developing law and emerging compliance issues.

Employers are beginning to confront the latest installment of the “lawsuit of the month” phenomenon: a series of class action lawsuits brought under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). Many of these cases allege that the authorization and disclosure forms used by companies violate FCRA’s requirements that applicants for employment must be given a clear and conspicuous written disclosure of the employer’s plans to do a background check, in a document that “consists solely of the disclosure.” Forms that include other language, including a release of claims against the third party performing the background check, have been challenged in many of these cases. Other pending cases raise questions about practices that are commonly used by employers in conducting background checks. These cases illustrate the ongoing compliance challenges posed by FCRA and state laws limiting background checks. And the EEOC continues to take aggressive positions in litigation over the use of information learned in background check investigations. In some of these cases, the agency appears to be initiating material changes to the guidance it issued in 2012.

Several state and local governments have enacted “Ban the Box” legislation. This is a trend that further complicates the use of criminal background checks.

A panel of Crowell & Moring lawyers will review these issues in a roundtable presentation.

Please click here for a copy of the presentation.