Judge: EEOC suit against backgrnd checks "egregious example of scientific dishonesty"

[Little-Acorn]

Looks like the Federal government (Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, or EEOC) tried to sue a company for using criminal background checks when hiring new employees.

The EEOC tried to tell the judge that criminal background checks discriminated unfairly against blacks, since blacks committed more crimes than whites.

Yes, really.

The judge threw the case out, saying the EEOC had completely failed to prove ANY racial discrimination.

And he ripped to shreds a report the EEOC tried to give him. Check out what he said in the last paragraph quoted here.

It's nice to find a ray of sunshine and sanity amidst all the BS the race-baiting industry keeps slinging around.

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Jason Riley: Jobless Blacks Should Cheer Background Checks - WSJ.com

Jason Riley: Jobless Blacks Should Cheer Background Checks
Research suggests that employers who use them are less likely to racially discriminate.

by JASON L. RILEY
August 22, 2013, 7:14 p.m. ET

The Obama administration took one on the chin earlier this month when a federal court ruled that companies may use criminal-background checks in hiring without being guilty of racial discrimination. Employers are thrilled about the decision, obviously. Less obvious is that the black unemployed, whose numbers have swelled under President Obama, also have reason to cheer.

The case dates to 2009, when the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued Freeman Co., an event management firm. The EEOC alleged that the company's criminal-background checks for job applicants discriminated against blacks, who in general are more likely than other groups to have criminal histories.

Judge Roger Titus of the U.S. District Court in Maryland disagreed. In his Aug. 9 ruling, he said that checking a person's criminal history is "a legitimate component of a reasonable hiring process." Employers "have a clear incentive to avoid hiring employees who have a proven tendency to defraud or steal from their employers, engage in workplace violence, or who otherwise appear to be untrustworthy and unreliable."

The meat of the ruling, however, is the court's blistering takedown of the government's "expert" report, authored by an outside statistician who attempted to establish that Freeman's criminal-background checks disproportionately harmed black job-seekers. Judge Titus described the report as "an egregious example of scientific dishonesty," its analysis "laughable," "skewed" and full of "cherry-picked data." He concluded that the "mind-boggling-number of errors" rendered the EEOC's "disparate impact conclusions worthless." There are "simply no facts here to support a theory of disparate impact resulting from any identified, specific practice."

 

[Little-Acorn]

What was even more ironic about this bogus lawsuit, as the judge pointed out, is that if companies are NOT allowed to use criminal background check while hiring, they are MORE likely to engage in racial profiling and discrimination.

If a company can use criminal background checks, it can hire a black person who hasn't been arrested or gone to jail, while declining someone who has.

But if they can't use background checks, then they might refuse ALL black applicants, knowing that a far higher proportion of blacks commit crimes, and that there's a greater chance that the black man who's applying now, might be a criminal.

 

[Little-Acorn]

And the funniest part?

The company the EEOC was suing, never checked an applicant's criminal background, until AFTER offering him a job!

Their job application forms had the usual questions about "Have you ever been convicted of a crime? If yes, please explain," etc. that every company has. If a guy wrote down that he had been convicted of stealing a car ten years ago or whatever, they would still offer him a job, although obviously less often than if his record was clean.

But the only time the results from a criminal background check were ever actually USED, was if they found out he had LIED on his application to them, like claiming only a minor drug offense or something, and then they find out he had been convicted of rape.

Court Slams EEOC On Background Check Lawsuit - Employment and HR - United States

Freeman utilized a nuanced, multi-level background check program based upon the position for which the applicant was applying. The company only ran a background check after it made an offer of employment, and it considered the results of background checks on a detailed, case-by-case basis. Indeed, the court noted that one of the few "bright-line" rules Freeman had for disqualifying an applicant was whether the applicant had lied on his/her application about criminal history; otherwise, the company looked at the timing and disposition of any criminal proceedings, as well as the relationship of the crime to the job for which the applicant was applying.

This company never used criminal background checks, to check for crimes.

They used them only to see if the applicant was lying to their faces.

And only AFTER offering him the job. There was no way their use of criminal background checks, could possibly be "racially discriminatory".