Are Employee Background Checks Racist? The EEOC And FTC Think So - Investors.com
03/27/2014 04:31 PM ET
The Obama administration has threatened employers that run criminal and credit background checks on job applicants, arguing these are racial "barriers" to hiring — even though federal agencies routinely use them.
Last week the Federal Trade Commission joined with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to tell employers that background checks could have a "disparate impact" on black people and expose private firms to lawsuits.
Threatening aggressive enforcement, the agencies released new compliance guidelines: "Background Checks: What Employers Need to Know." They advise employers to "take special care when basing employment decisions on background problems that may be more common among people of a certain race."
Noting that black men are incarcerated at six times the rate of white men, the EEOC said African-Americans are far more likely to have a criminal record that would exclude them from jobs under screening policies.
Disparate impact is a controversial civil-rights theory applied increasingly by the administration, from home loans to school discipline. It relies on statistics to indicate racism, a much lower standard of proof than actual acts of racism.
