Equal Opportunity Hiring: New Changes to EdJoin
Settlement Results in Changes to EdJoin.org Application Template
In 2018, Walter Killian and Safe Return Project challenged the West Contra Costa Unified School District’s hiring practices for job applicants who had prior contact with the criminal legal system. Read the Impact Fund blog post for the full details of the case.
In the resulting settlement, the District removed the prior conviction question from its employment application form hosted on EdJoin.org, which has updated its application template statewide.
For the first time, all districts are able to avoid asking about prior convictions in their initial employment application forms. We encourage other California school districts to adopt this change in their hiring process to ensure equal employment opportunities for people with prior criminal legal system contact.
For more information, contact Lindsay Nako, Director of Litigation & Training at the Impact Fund, or Novella Coleman, Litigation Director at Bay Area Legal Aid.
(L to R): Daniel Nesbit and Lindsay Nako, Impact Fund; Tamisha Walker, Plaintiff Safe Return Project; Plaintiff Walter Killian; Rebekah Evenson
All California school districts now have the opportunity to remove inquiries about prior convictions from their initial application forms on EdJoin, allowing them to assess job qualification before considering an applicant’s prior contact with the criminal legal system.
Sample Policies and Notices
The following sample documents have been made available for reference:
Process for Evaluating Job Applicants with Prior Convictions, WCCUSD [Document]
Sample Notice of Conditional Job Offer, WCCUSD [Document]
Sample Notice of Conviction, WCCUSD [Document]
Sample Notice of Revocation, WCCUSD [Document]
View the Complete Settlement Agreement
Killian v. West Contra Costa Unified School District, Joint Notice of Settlement [Document]
“[I]ndividuals with criminal records have a much longer tenure and are less likely to quit their jobs voluntarily than other workers.”
Benefits of Hiring Applicants with Prior Convictions
Too often employers use contact with the criminal legal system as a reason for eliminating otherwise qualified candidates. Providing equal employment opportunities improves employers’ pool of qualified applicants, helps build and retain a strong workforce, furthers public safety, and is better for the economy.
Asking about criminal history or prior convictions on initial employment applications excludes qualified applicants from consideration.
Amanda Agan & Sonja Starr, Ban the Box, Criminal Records, and Statistical Discrimination: A Field Experiment
National Conference of State Legislatures, Barriers to Work: People with Criminal Records
The negative impact of this shortcut is greater for Black applicants than white applicants, even when both groups have had contact with the criminal legal system.
Devah Pager et al., Sequencing Disadvantage: Barriers to Employment Facing Young Black and White Men with Criminal Records at pages 196, 200-201
Jennifer Eberhardt et al., Seeing Black: Race, Crime, and Visual Processing at page 876 (collecting sources)
Employers who rely on this shortcut open themselves to potential legal liability.
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Enforcement Guidance on the Consideration of Arrest and Conviction Records in Employment Decisions under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act
Department of Fair Employment & Housing, Criminal History in Employment
Background records are often incomplete and full of errors, such as including criminal records belonging to someone else, listing records that have been sealed or expunged, omitting important information, or providing misleading or incorrect information. Many individuals with criminal records are arrested or charged but not ultimately convicted of any crime.
National Consumer Law Center, Broken Records Redux: How Errors by Criminal Background Check Companies Continue to Harm Consumers Seeking Jobs and Housing
Shawn Anderson, Ban the Box: Mediation’s Place in Criminal Reentry and Employment Rights at pages 157, 159
Amy L. Solomon, In Search of a Job: Criminal Records as Barriers to Employment
“[O]ne study involving 59,000 workers found that felonies appearing on criminal background checks were incorrect at least 42% of the time.”
A past criminal conviction is not a reliable indicator of poor future work performance. Studies indicate that employees with prior convictions have lower rates of turnover, higher rates of promotion, longer tenure, and lower likelihood of quitting their jobs voluntarily than other employees.
Assem. Bill 1008 (2017-2018 Reg. Sess.) at § 1(h)
Jennifer Hickes Lundquist et al., Does a Criminal Past Predict Worker Performance? Evidence from One of America’s Largest Employers at pages 1039–1068
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, New Research from UMass Amherst Sociologist Finds Ex-Felons in the Military Are Promoted Faster, to Higher Ranks than Other Enlistees
Dylan Minor, Nicola Persico & Deborah M. Weiss, Criminal background and job performance
Providing equal employment opportunities to people with criminal legal system contact increases public safety. Ample empirical evidence shows that employment decreases the likelihood that a person will commit another crime and aids successful community reentry.
Amy L. Solomon, In Search of a Job: Criminal Records as Barriers to Employment at note 2
Taja-Nia Y. Henderson, The Ironic Promise of the Thirteenth Amendment for Offender Anti-Discrimination Law at pages 1161-1162 (noting increasingly salient role of private discrimination against convicted persons)