Statement of Commissioner Gail Heriot in the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights' Report, 'Assessing the Impact of Criminal Background Checks and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Conviction Records Policy'

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gail L. Heriot
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ◽  
Equal Employment Opportunity ◽  
Employment Opportunity ◽  
Criminal Background Checks ◽  
Background Checks ◽  
Equal Employment ◽  
Criminal Background ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The U.S

scholarly journals Caught Between a Rock, Negligence, Racism, and a Hard Place

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 135-158
Author(s):  
Eniola O. Akinrinade
Keyword(s):  
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ◽  
Job Applicants ◽  
Title Vii ◽  
Disparate Impact ◽  
Criminal Background Checks ◽  
The Public ◽  
Background Checks ◽  
Equal Employment ◽  
Criminal Background ◽  
Catch 22

In many instances, employers have an obligation to conduct criminal background checks on their applicants to ensure that the public that comes into contact with these employees shall not be harmed. In other instances, these criminal background checks are unnecessary as they prove to be of little relevance, yet they have the effect of causing a disparate impact within certain Title VII-protected classes, including Black Americans and Hispanics. To resolve this disparate impact, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (“EEOC”) has set forth non-biding guidance, proposing an assessment of “Green Factors” that employers should consider before denying an ex-convict employment. In following this guidance, the EEOC aims to create equal employment opportunities for all job applicants including those with criminal histories. While this guidance and these Green factors play a large role in furthering societal benefits, many employers have raised objections to the recent EEOC guidance. Employers argue that the guidance creates a “catch-22,” forcing the employer to choose between being liable for negligent hiring and being liable for violating Title VII. Because the EEOC guidance furthers fundamental societal interests, it should remain in effect. Nevertheless, the guidance must be amended in order to clarify its ambiguous language concerning “business necessity,” which will then resolve the catch-22 conflict that employers currently experience.

scholarly journals The Impact of Federal Civil Rights Policy on Black Economic Progress: Evidence from the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972

ILR Review ◽  
1998 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 608-632 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Y. Chay
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Equal Employment Opportunity ◽  
Employment Opportunity ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Current Population Survey Data ◽  
Equal Employment ◽  
Relative Gains ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Impact

The Equal Employment Opportunity Act (EEOA) of 1972 extended civil rights coverage to employers with 15–24 employees, while leaving unaffected the civil rights protection for employees of larger firms. In conjunction with pre-existing state fair employment practice (FEP) laws, the EEOA provides a “natural experiment” in which the treatment and control groups are defined by differences across industries in the fraction of workers employed in the newly covered establishments and across states in the scope of the FEP laws. Applying the treatment and control group methodology to Current Population Survey data, the author finds that there were large shifts in the employment and pay practices of the industries most affected by the amendment. The timing of the relative gains and their concentration by industry and region provide evidence that the EEOA had a positive impact on the labor market status of African-Americans.

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