Posted on 02/21/2014 5:01:26 PM PST by jazusamo
A new Obama administration policy that says criminal background checks are discriminatory against minority job applicants is “deeply flawed,” according to half of the commissioners who sit on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, the independent and bipartisan federal agency created by Congress decades ago.
The administration has gone after companies that use criminal background checks to screen job applicants, claiming in lawsuits that the probes disproportionately exclude blacks from hire. In the last year the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal agency that enforces the nation’s workplace discrimination laws, has sued two large companies that screen criminal background records, asserting that it violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Ironically, the EEOC conducts criminal background checks as a condition of employment and credit background checks for most of its positions.
But when private businesses utilize the tool it violates federal civil rights laws because information about prior convictions is used to discriminate against a racial or ethnic group, according to an EEOC policy issued in mid-2012. A few months ago a federal judge hearing one of the EEOC’s discrimination lawsuits against a family-owned company in Maryland blasted the argument, ruling that the allegations are “laughable,” “distorted,” “cherry-picked,” “worthless” and “an egregious example of scientific dishonesty.”
There are simply no facts to support a theory of disparate impact, the judge wrote in his ruling, further stating: “By bringing actions of this nature, the EEOC has placed many employers in the Hobson’s choice of ignoring criminal history and credit background, thus exposing themselves to potential liability for criminal and fraudulent acts committed by employees, on the one hand, or incurring the wrath of the EEOC for having utilized information deemed fundamental by most employers.”
On the heels of that whipping the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, established by Congress in 1957 to enhance enforcement of federal civil rights laws, has released a report in which half of the agency’s commissioners sharply criticize the absurd criminal check regulation. The agency has eight commissioners, four appointed by the president and four by congress. They serve six-year terms and play a vital role in advancing civil rights through objective and comprehensive investigation, research and analysis.
The EEOC’s criminal background check policy is “deeply flawed” and exceeds the agency’s authority, writes U.S. Commission on Civil Rights Commissioner Peter N. Kirsanow, a presidential appointee. Furthermore, it was adopted without releasing a draft to the public, Kirsanow writes. He explains that the foundation of the new policy is flawed because it misapplies disparate impact theory by failing to appropriately compare non-offenders to offenders and by conflating arrestees with convicts. “Perhaps more importantly, discouraging the use of criminal background checks leaves Americans more likely to fall victim to the behavior that leads to negligent hiring lawsuits.”
Here’s another good point made by Kirsanow, an African-American lawyer with an Ivy League degree who sits on the board of the Center for New Black Leadership; the EEO’s new policy “is unlikely to increase employment among African American men who are the primary purported beneficiaries.” The civil rights commission’s vice chair, Abigail Thernstrom, and another commissioner, Todd Gaziano, collaborated with Kirsanow’s statements in the report.
Commissioner Gail Heriot, a law professor at the University of San Diego California, also denounced the policy, writing in the report that it’s an “especially ill-considered idea” that will “almost certainly do more harm than good.” Heriot, a congressional appointee to the civil rights commission, classifies the measure as a bad federal regulatory idea that can do a great deal of damage. “When the EEOC tells employers that they risk liability for race discrimination if they reject job applicants on account of their criminal records, that action will have effects from Maine to the Midway Atoll.”
At least for now this government isn’t telling businesses directly who they can or can’t hire, but that is likely in obozo’s EO policy pipeline
This SOB should go to some African, Latin American or Middle Eastern country if he wants to be a dictator
They are not bad things
Everybody does it all the time .... or else everyone would drink black coffee
Now I remember.
For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
Eph 6:12
Another Obama-Holder-Ogletree-Cone “reparations” effort.
The fact that a once almost totally leftist USCRC would have this much bipartisan dissent on a policy, is a major victory for common sense and safety. IT IS ALSO A MAJOR DEFEAT FOR COMRADE OBAMA AND RACIST A.G. HOLDER.
The American people are waking up to the Marxist-in-Chief’s attempts to not only “fundamentally transform American Society”, but to illegally, unconstitutionally, and subversively destroy our freedoms.
The IRS; EPA; Dept. of Interior, Energy, Agriculture, Energy and Education; FCC; FTC; ICC; and the targetted USCRC, have all been corrupted or targetted for corruption by the most corrupt American government EVER.
Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Beria, Brezhnev, Putin, Castro brothers, Hugo Chavez and Maduro, Ortega, Morales, Correa, Kirchner, whoever is running Red China today, and the little psychopath in No. Korea, all love to celebrate “President’s Day”, only it is a celebration of Obama’s birthday, not that of Washington and Lincoln.
I WONDER WHY?
Yep...For the most part they are buying votes and don't care who's votes they are.
Let’s see:
Background checks to buy a kid a .22 rifle = not discriminatory.
Background checks to hire an employee who must be trusted = discriminatory.
O.K. I get it.
And child molesters would be hired to be playground monitors.
I couldn't agree more and at first thought the title was botched.
The man who murdered the little 10 y/o girl he kidnapped in Springfield, MO was a convicted drug abuser.....and a paraprofessional in an elementary school....and a coach.
What background check?
Exactly...Evidently they didn’t but if they did a background check they ignored it, either way they were abettors.
Is this what the black race wants? This kind of constant degrading publicity? Wouldn’t they prefer to have positive things written about them - their achievements, their hard work, their goals, their desire to be treated like everyone else? Can’t they tell the powers that be to stop doing them favors and let them be accepted as normal folks without any special privileges? If more blacks commit crimes and go to prison, so be it. If more blacks have criminal records and can’t find jobs, so be it.
SHAPE UP AND DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!!
“A new Obama administration policy that says criminal background checks are discriminatory against minority job applicants is “deeply flawed,”
How do they feel about background checks against minority gun buyers?
Why? He’s getting away with it here.
YOU’RE DAMN RIGHT ITS “DISCRIMINATORY”!!!!
THAT’S THE POINT!!
Employers have NO OBLIGATION TO TAKE THE NEXT PERSON WHO WALKS IN OFF OF THE STREET!!!
Amen to that...When people screw up big time they should be discriminated against.
Just one more way to further reduce the number of jobs in America.
Family Dollar either didn't do a background check or chose to ignore a violent criminal history and now 2 young people are dead. Pressure from the DOJ perhaps?
For those FREEPERS that think ex felons should have their right to vote restored, this POS did 1 yr for a rape committed during a home invasion but I guess his "debt to society" had been paid.
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