by Jeffrey M. Landes, Susan Gross Sholinsky, and Jennifer A. Goldman, with Teiko Shigezumi
The On April 25, 2012, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) issued an enforcement guidance document titled “Enforcement Guidance on the Consideration of Arrest and Conviction Records in Employment Decisions Under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e et. seq.“ (the “Guidance”), with respect to employers’ use of arrest and conviction information in connection with employment decisions.
Disparate Treatment v. Disparate Impact
Although Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (“Title VII”) does not prohibit employers’ use of criminal background checks, the Guidance reaffirms the EEOC’s longstanding position that employers may violate Title VII if they use criminal background information improperly. The Guidance, which updates and consolidates existing EEOC guidance documents on the subject that have previously been left unchanged since 1990, focuses on employment discrimination based on race and national origin.
According to the EEOC, there are two ways in which an employer’s use of criminal history information may violate Title VII. First, Title VII prohibits employers from engaging in “disparate treatment” discrimination – that is, treating job applicants with the same criminal records differently because of their race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Second, even where employers apply a criminal record exclusion under a neutral policy (e.g., uniformly excluding applicants based on certain criminal conduct), the exclusion may still operate to disproportionately and unjustifiably keep out people of a particular race or national origin. This is referred to as “disparate impact” discrimination. If the employer does not show that such an exclusion is “job related and consistent with business necessity” for the position in question, the exclusion is unlawful under Title VII.
