The federal EEOC has been helping prepare the ground with guidance indicating that it legally disfavors asking job applicants about criminal records across a wide range of situations. Meanwhile, activists in places like San Francisco seek local laws banning the practice in private employment, following successful campaigns to end it in the public sector. [San Francisco Chronicle]
Posts Tagged ‘criminal records and hiring’
Great moments in public employee tenure
According to the Chicago Sun-Times, an Illinois prison official “with a lengthy criminal history” has returned to the state payroll despite a record of “lewd and inappropriate emails” on the taxpayers’ dime and falsifying an earlier job application [Chicago Sun-Times]:
…Still, Gov. Pat Quinn’s administration struck a settlement with McCraven and his union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees….
In June, [after withdrawing a lawsuit] he then dropped a union grievance and accepted a 10-day suspension, got six months of back pay and was transferred to the job he now holds as senior adviser to the chief of parole with the Illinois Department of Corrections.
Asked to explain why McCraven was allowed to stay on the state payroll, the Quinn administration cited the potential financial costs of losing a grievance case. …
The Chicago Sun-Times reported Monday that McCraven is working for the state prison system despite being arrested “at least” 24 times on charges including arson, illegal gun possession, attempted robbery, drug possession and aggravated assault.
November 11 roundup
- Incoming Australian attorney general: we’ll repeal race-speech laws that were used to prosecute columnist Andrew Bolt [Sydney Morning Herald, Melbourne Herald-Sun, earlier]
- Texas sues EEOC on its criminal background check policy [Employee Screen]
- After Eric Turkewitz criticizes $85M announced demand in Red Bull suit, comments section turns lively [NYPIAB]
- If only Gotham’s official tourism agency acted like a tourism agency [Coyote on NYC’s official war against AirBnB; Ilya Shapiro, Cato; earlier here and here, etc.]
- “Lawmaker wants Georgia bicyclists to buy license plates” [WSB]
- Religious liberty implications of European moves to ban infant circumcision [Eugene Kontorovich]
- Video on CPSC’s quest for personal liability against agency-mocking Craig Zucker of Buckyballs fame [Reason TV, earlier]
Sixth Circuit upholds $750,000 fee award against EEOC
As mentioned yesterday, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has either had a stretch of really, really bad luck in court lately, or else it’s been caught out by a series of judges for outrageously aggressive litigation sometimes crossing over into misconduct. Among the recent cases, the Sixth Circuit upheld a fee award of $750,000 to a company that the commission had sued over a purported policy of not hiring convicted felons. Here’s Molly DiBianca of the Delaware Employment Law Blog:
The EEOC “investigated” the Charge, issuing multiple subpoenas and obtaining more than 15,000 pages of documents. Although the evidence did not seem to support the allegations in the Charge, EEOC disagreed and filed suit. The suit, asserted on a class of individuals, alleged that the company’s policy prohibited the hiring “of any person with a criminal record,” which disparately impacted Black applicants.
The trouble, though, was that PeopleMark did not have such a policy. Then the EEOC identified approximately 250 individuals it contended to be within the class of aggrieved persons. Well, as it turned out, PeopleMark had hired 57 of the individuals and some others did not have a criminal background in the first place.
More from Eric Paltell/Kollman & Saucier; DeGroff & Maatman; Greg Mersol, Baker Hostetler; EEOC v. PeopleMark.
Free speech roundup
- Chicago-area bus company keeps menacing customer-critics with lawsuits [Coyote]
- Some government officials want a say in who owns newspapers [Ira Stoll on Hartford Courant/Koch story] Using public apparatus to squelch political adversaries not exactly something new in America [David Beito on New Deal episodes]
- Barbarity: “Saudi Court Condemns Editor to 600 Lashes With Breaks” [Bloomberg (“insulting Islam”), Volokh]
- Scheme backed by many state AGs to roll back websites’ immunity for content posted by visitors “could singlehandedly cripple free speech online” [ACLU, earlier]
- Attention enemies of Ken at Popehat: even if you can find your bus pass you’ll still need to withstand his cat squirt bottle [Popehat; another speech case there (censorious bell can’t be unrung) and yet another (bogus DMCA notice)]
- State law providing that persons with erased records are “deemed never to have been arrested” never meant to muzzle discussion of arrests [Eugene Volokh]
- Nova Scotia: “cyberbullying legislation allows victims to sue” [CBC]
Labor and employment roundup
- EEOC guidance lost big in last week’s SCOTUS employment decisions [Daniel Fisher, Michael Greve]
- Classification of obesity as a “disease” has huge employment law implications [Jon Hyman]
- EEOC goes after BMW, Dollar General over criminal background checks on job candidates [ABA Journal, Althouse, Michael Carvin and Eric Dreiband (“The Government Checks Criminal Records. Why Can’t Private Employers?”), Employer’s Lawyer, earlier] “So the gov’t convicts minorities at a disproportionate rate. Then the gov’t sues companies that checks those records, smart.” [Surya Gunasekara] Why not ban Google too? (Don’t give them ideas, please) [ Mike Riggs]
- Wage and hour suits soar, record number filed so far in 2013 [Corp Counsel, Overtime Lawyer, I-Sight] Related: what’s wrong with the epithet “wage theft” [Hyman]
- Employer’s claim: I can’t get due process from Connecticut Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities [Daniel Schwartz]
- The First Amendment protects our speech rights against the government, not against those we deal with in the workplace who may disapprove [Schwartz and more on Connecticut employment proposal] NLRB “attempting to sanction a California newspaper despite a federal appeals court’s decision that such a ruling threatened the publisher’s First Amendment rights.” [Washington Free Beacon]
- “Bergen, Passaic County towns saddled with costs as lawsuits filed by police add up” [Bergen Record via NJLRA]
Labor and employment roundup
- Controversy over new EEOC guidelines on hiring ex-cons isn’t going away [James Bovard/Peter Kirsanow, Richard Epstein/Hoover “Defining Ideas”, Kevin Funnell, Wendy McElroy/FEE]
- That goes double if it’s true: “You cannot fire a pregnant employee because ‘the baby is taking its toll on you'” [Cohen, Fox Rothschild] Maryland bill would grant pregnant employees right to accommodation, “less strenuous job duties” if needed [Baltimore Sun]
- And similarly: “Is an employer obligated to provide light duty to an employee returning from FMLA leave?” [Jon Hyman]
- Why Card-Krueger study doesn’t change Bryan Caplan’s view on economics of the minimum wage [EconLib]
- Quest for a Labor Secretary even farther left than Hilda Solis eventuates in Tom Perez [Katrina Trinko, J. Christian Adams]
- Unhappy aftermath of Connecticut nursing-home sabotage [Washington Examiner] Assaults by members of Teamster local in Philadelphia quarry dispute draw NLRB response [Pennsylvania Independent]
- Will New York become the first state to create dangerous private right of action for “workplace bullying”? [Michael Fox]
Labor and employment roundup
- On minimum wage these days, Krugman lets politics sit in for economics [David Henderson] Minimum wage hikes don’t cost jobs? A notion so ideologically convenient just has to be true [Steve Chapman]
- “Is employment a ‘human right'”? [Richard Epstein, Hoover “Defining Ideas”]
- Project labor agreements are an unjustified giveaway in New Jersey’s post-Sandy reconstruction [Trey Kovacs, CEI Open Market]
- Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake proposes public pension reform [Baltimore Sun] Reality check on sunny New York projections [@NYDNHammond]
- Peter Kirsanow on EEOC crackdown on criminal background checks [Employee Screen]
- Three Missouri Dems favor bill making it felony for lawmakers to propose bills limiting union powers [Robby Soave, Daily Caller]
- Meet the brothers who are standing up to union violence in Philadelphia construction [Jillian Melchior, NR, earlier]
“NCAA sued over rule barring felons”
“A nonprofit group sued the NCAA on Wednesday over a new policy that bars felons from coaching NCAA-sanctioned events. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Diego, claims that the new rule violates the Civil Rights Act and disproportionately affects minority coaches.” [ESPN, auto-plays video] The suit dovetails with the EEOC’s new crackdown on employer consideration of criminal records, which as James Bovard writes in the Wall Street Journal, seems calculated to raise the legal risks substantially for employers who put job applicants through criminal background checks: it denies the “business necessity” defense to employers even when a state’s law mandates the use of criminal checks, and requires most employers seeking to consider criminal records to enter a legal minefield of obligatory “individualized assessment” in which decisions can be second-guessed readily and expensively:
It is difficult to overstate the EEOC’s zealotry on this issue. The agency is demanding that one of [former EEOC general counsel Donald] Livingston’s clients — the Freeman Companies, a convention and corporate events planner — pay compensation to rejected job applicants who lied about their criminal records.
Labor and employment roundup
- McDonald’s worker complains she’s not paid $15/hour, but there’s a logical problem with that [David Henderson]
- EEOC Phoenix office signs pact with Mexican consulates to curb discrimination against illegals [EEOC press release]
- “Former Lawmaker (and Ex-Felon) Urges Connecticut To Ban Discrimination Against Felons in 2013” [Daniel Schwartz]
- Connecticut: “NLRB sues to reinstate union saboteurs at nursing homes” [Gehrke, DC Examiner, Schwartz, Jillian Kay Melchior/NRO, earlier on pols that enable the strikers] More: Ivan Osorio.
- OSHA after clerk robbery: “handling money, working alone and standing behind open counters” expose employer to violations [OSHA press release]
- “N.D. Ill.: Under ADAAA, Asthma Triggered by Strong Perfume Might Be Disability” [Bagenstos]
- “Worker centers” allow organizers to dodge the legal responsibilities owed to workers by actual labor unions [Stefan Marculewicz and Jennifer Thomas, Fed Soc]