U.S. sues employers using criminal background checks in discriminatory manner

On June 11, 2013, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued BMW and Dollar General for firing a disproportionate number of minority employees for having criminal records, the Washington Post reports. A front page story on June 12, by Ylan Q. Mui, the Post's labor reporter, reports on the broader problem of criminal convictions driving unemployment.

In the EEOC case versus BMW, a woman who had worked for BMW for 14 years was fired because a recent background check found a misdemeanor conviction more than 20 years old that was punished by a $137 fine! In the Dollar General case, a job offer was rescinded to a black woman after a criminal background check, even though the record was found to be inaccurate! A second allegation in the Dollar General case involved a drug conviction of a black woman that was six-years old.

The Post probed the implications of these convictions more deeply, however.

The Post said a 2012 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) that of those companies that conduct background checks, one quarter said nonviolent misdemeanors, such as drug convictions could influence their hiring decisions. However the slide actually said that a nonviolent misdemeanor would be "very influential" in the decision to not extend a job offer.

According to a PowerPoint presentation of a SHRM 2010 survey of the same type, slide 5, says that 73 percent of companies surveyed find a nonviolent misdemeanor conviction would be "very or somewhat influential" in not making a job offer!    


Criminal convictions are a mighty contribution to the crisis of unemployment and the consequent lack of demand in the U.S. domestic economy.

On Friday, June 14, the Task Force on Over-Criminalization in the U.S. House of Representatives is going to begin to examine the issue.