In 2021, the California case of All of Us or None v. Hamrick caused significant background check delays in some of the state’s county courts. Essentially, background check companies could no longer verify personal identifying information for criminal defendants in state court index searches, including full dates of birth, because the court held that the information was private. As such, background check companies have been unable to report some criminal record search results.

The Professional Background Screening Association (PBSA), along with other groups, advocated against this ruling, which became the impetus for the California legislature amending Senate Bill SB1262 to rectify this issue. Specifically, the amendment mandated that “[p]ublicly accessible electronic indexes of defendants in criminal cases shall permit searches and filtering of results based on a defendant’s driver’s license number or date of birth, or both.” With this language, background check companies would have been able to provide driver’s license numbers or dates of birth to the court index to properly confirm the identity of the individual.

However, the California governor has now vetoed the bill.

Without this amendment, employers will have to continue to work with their background screening company to determine the best options for verifying the identify of certain California applicants.

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As always, Hire Image is here to help. Please contact us if you have any questions about how this may affect your own background screening practices.