by Leonardo Castaneda - Bay Area News Group
Whitney Merchant had been looking for a new job since she left AC Transit late last year. Despite the bleak economic conditions caused by COVID-19, she finally landed a position with a major health care company on their coronavirus communications team.
But Merchant hasn’t been able to start work because her new employer can’t complete a standard background check in two Bay Area counties where courthouses have shut down.
by Lynne E. Evans - Duane Morris Banking and Finance Law
Right now, many creditors may be considering making accommodations to consumers affected by COVID-19 by offering different ways to help ease the burden of existing debt obligations. In doing so, creditors should take care to follow the special credit reporting rules for such accommodations set forth in the recently passed Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (“CARES Act”).
by Rod M. Fliegel - Littler
On March 20, 2020, the Ninth Circuit issued its third opinion on the question of when an employer’s background check disclosure satisfies the so-called “standalone” disclosure requirement in the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA).1 The new opinion, like the two prior ones (Syed and Gilberg), reads the text of the FCRA literally, but also provides some practical guidance for drafting such disclosures. Addressing a separate obligation that employers have to provide “pre-adverse” action notice when relying on background reports, the Ninth Circuit rejected the plaintiff’s argument that the FCRA affords a right to discuss the report directly with the employer.
Commentary by Joseph Moreno - Cadwalader Cabinet
The California Attorney General ("AG") proposed additional modifications to proposed regulations for the California Consumer Privacy Act ("CCPA"), which went into effect on January 1, 2020, and will be enforced starting July 1, 2020.
by Jason Zuckerman and Matthew Stock - The National Law Review
To promote the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s mission of preventing consumer harm, the CFPB is working with Congress to advance legislation that would create a whistleblower reward program. The draft legislation creating a CFPB whistleblower reward program is similar to the SEC whistleblower reward program. Under the proposed program, a whistleblower who provides original information to the CFPB relating to a violation of Federal consumer financial law that results in an enforcement action yielding at least $1,000,000 in monetary sanctions would be eligible for an award of 10 to 30 percent of the collected monetary sanctions. The Consumer Financial Protection Act of 2010, which created the CFPB includes a provision protecting whistleblowers against retaliation for reporting violations of CFPB rules, but it does not authorize awards to whistleblowers.
Read more: https://www.natlawreview.com/article/cfpb-proposes-consumer-protection-whistleblower-reward-program
by Barry Cook - Information/Age
The past few years have been challenging for IT and business teams. From implementing the conditions of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR); monitoring the slow passage of the ePrivacy Regulation (ePR); responding to the revised cookie guidelines of national agencies and preparing for and putting in processes to mitigate the potential implications of the will-they won’t-they Brexit situation in the UK, there’s been a lot to take in.
by Sarah K. Carpenter - Smith Currie
Maryland’s “Ban the Box” law, the Criminal Record Screening Practices Act (the “Criminal Record Act”), went into effect February 29, 2020. Maryland now joins a growing number of states and localities that have implemented “Ban the Box” restrictions prohibiting employers from requesting information about a job applicant’s criminal history. The Federal Government also joined the “Ban the Box” legislative wave on December 20, 2019 when President Trump signed into law the Fair Chance to Compete for Jobs Act of 2019 (the “Fair Chance Act”), which is scheduled to go into effect in December 2021.
by Sierra Hignite - WISHTV.com
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — An Indiana lawmaker wants to close a loophole involving background checks at Indiana day care facilities for children.
News 8 talked to parents who say they were shocked to hear that the proposal was not already a requirement.
There are a lot of day care facilities that require criminal background checks for all of their employees, but the state law only requires that some people get those criminal background checks.
by Nancy L. Gunzenhauser Popper and Amanda M. Gomez - The National Law Review
On January 29, 2020, the House of Representatives passed the Comprehensive CREDIT Act of 2020 (the “Act”), which would change federal laws pertaining to consumer reporting agencies and credit checks in a number of ways. Significantly for employers, the Act includes an amendment (originally H.R. 3614 – “Restricting Credit Checks for Employment Decisions Act”) to the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”), which would restrict the use of credit information for most employment decisions.
Read more: https://www.natlawreview.com/article/house-passes-bill-restricting-employer-credit-checks
by Jonathan Zittrain - The Atlantic
Twenty years ago at a Silicon Valley product launch, Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy dismissed concern about digital privacy as a red herring: “You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.”
“Zero privacy” was meant to placate us, suggesting that we have a fixed amount of stuff about ourselves that we’d like to keep private. Once we realized that stuff had already been exposed and, yet, the world still turned, we would see that it was no big deal. But what poses as unsentimental truth telling isn’t cynical enough about the parlous state of our privacy.
