{"id":573,"date":"2012-08-31T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-08-31T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/events-lindabury.blawgcloud.com\/1970\/01\/new-and-more-restrictive-eeoc-enforcement-guidelines-on-criminal-background-checks.html"},"modified":"2025-02-05T11:36:54","modified_gmt":"2025-02-05T16:36:54","slug":"new-and-more-restrictive-eeoc-enforcement-guidelines-on-criminal-background-checks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/new-and-more-restrictive-eeoc-enforcement-guidelines-on-criminal-background-checks.html","title":{"rendered":"New and More Restrictive EEOC Enforcement Guidelines on Criminal Background Checks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Employment Law Newsletter<\/p>\n<p>Many employers use criminal background checks to &#8220;weed out&#8221; individuals who engage in activities that pose significant risks to the workplace. This past April the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eeoc.gov\/\" target=\"new\" rel=\"noopener\">United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission<\/a> (EEOC) issued its Enforcement Guidance on the Consideration of Arrest and Conviction Records in Employment Decisions under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (&#8220;Guidance&#8221;). Employers should consult the Guidance before considering criminal histories when making employment decisions.<\/p>\n<p>While having a criminal record is not a protected characteristic under Title VII, the Guidance warns that excluding an individual from employment on the basis of an arrest or criminal history may result in unlawful race or national origin discrimination under Title VII in one of two ways. First, the Guidance points to statistical evidence showing that Blacks and Hispanics are arrested and convicted in far greater numbers than Caucasians. Thus, an employer taking these records into account may unintentionally discriminate along racial and national origin lines because Blacks and Hispanics are disproportionately arrested as compared to other groups (commonly known as unintentional disparate impact discrimination). Second, an employer can utilize the existence of an arrest or conviction as a pretext to intentionally deny employment on the basis of race or national origin (commonly known as intentional disparate treatment discrimination).<\/p>\n<div class=\"read_more_link\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/new-and-more-restrictive-eeoc-enforcement-guidelines-on-criminal-background-checks.html\"  title=\"Continue Reading New and More Restrictive EEOC Enforcement Guidelines on Criminal Background Checks\" class=\"more-link\">Continue Reading \u203a<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Employment Law Newsletter Many employers use criminal background checks to &#8220;weed out&#8221; individuals who engage in activities that pose significant risks to the workplace. This past April the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued its Enforcement Guidance on the Consideration of Arrest and Conviction Records in Employment Decisions under Title VII of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,247],"tags":[],"coauthors":[139],"class_list":["post-573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-insights","category-labor-employment-insights"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>New and More Restrictive EEOC Enforcement Guidelines on Criminal Background Checks &#8212; August 31, 2012 &#8212; Lindabury, McCormick, Estabrook &amp; Cooper, P.C. Firm News &amp; Events<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Employment Law Newsletter Many employers use criminal background checks to &quot;weed out&quot; individuals who engage in activities that pose significant risks to\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.lindabury.com\/firm\/insights\/new-and-more-restrictive-eeoc-enforcement-guidelines-on-criminal-background-checks.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"New and More Restrictive EEOC Enforcement Guidelines on Criminal Background Checks &#8212; August 31, 2012 &#8212; Lindabury, McCormick, Estabrook &amp; Cooper, P.C. 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