Connor v. First Student, Inc.:  California Law Protecting Employees from Illegal Background Checks is Constitutional

For the past six years Hunter Pyle Law, along with our excellent co-counsel Lewis, Feinberg, Lee and Jackson, P.C., have represented a group of approximately 1200 bus drivers who had illegal background checks run on them by their employer.  California law is very clear:  with some exceptions not Gear-and-Gavel_dark-bluerelevant here, before an employer can have a background check company run a background check on an employee, it must do the following:

  1. It must disclose, in a document consisting solely of that disclosure, that it intends to run a background check; and
  2. The employee must authorize the background check in writing.

Cal. Civil Code § 1786.16(a)(2).  The employer must take these two steps every time that it wants to run a background check.  If it does not, it is liable to the employee for a minimum of $10,000, plus attorneys’ fees and punitive damages.  Cal. Civil Code § 1786.50.

California’s background check law therefore provides critical protections for California workers.  This law was enacted because employers were having background checks run on employees without telling them.  Sometimes these background checks would contain wrong information that would then follow the employees around for years, preventing them from getting jobs.  The cases that prompted California’s Legislature to act are truly horrible, and involve people being unable to find work, becoming homeless, etc., all because of false information in background checks that they did not even know were being run.  (more…)