Privacy Issues in the Workplace

 Any non-felony conviction for marijuana possession that is two or more years old.

Further, employers who consider convictions can be found to have discriminated against employees or job applicants where a use of that information has an adverse impact based on a protected classification. The new regulation, Section 11071.1 specifies that it is the applicant or employee’s burden to prove an adverse impact; however, it also provides that state- or national-level statistics showing substantial disparities in the conviction records of one or more categories enumerated in the FEHA are “ presumptively sufficient to establish an adverse impact. ” In its Final Statement of Reasons for the new regulation, the DFEH specifically cited such statistics published by the EEOC, the California Attorney General’s Criminal Justice Statistics Center, and its OpenJustice initiative. The employer may rebut this presumption by making a showing that there is “a reason to expect a markedly different result after accounting for any particularized circumstances such as the geographic area encompassed by the applicant or employee pool, the particular types of convictions being considered, or the particular job at issue.” If an employee or applicant establishes an adverse impact, the employer can avoid liability by demonstrating that using the conviction information was job-related and consistent with business necessity. The regulation states, “in order to establish job-relatedness and business necessity, any employer must demonstrate that the policy or practice is appropriately tailored,” and requires that the employer consider at least the following three mandatory factors: the nature and gravity of the offense or conduct; the time that has passed since the offense or conduct and/or completion of the sentence; and the nature of the job sought. In order to demonstrate that a policy or practice of considering conviction history is appropriately tailored, and therefore job-related and consistent with business necessity, the employer must either:

 Demonstrate that any “bright line” consideration of conviction information can properly distinguish between applicants and employees that do and do not pose an unacceptable level of risk and that the convictions considered have a direct and specific negative bearing on the persons’ ability to perform the duties or responsibilities necessarily related to the employment position. DFEH will presume that any “bright- line” rule that relies upon convictions that are more than seven years old is not job-related and consistent with business necessity. An employer may rebut this presumption with evidence.

or,

 Demonstrate that it conducts individualized assessments of the

circumstances and qualifications of applicants or employees excluded by the conviction screen. This individualized assessment must include notice to the employee or applicant that they have been screened out

Privacy Issues in the Workplace ©2021 (s) Liebert Cassidy Whitmore 37