January

Effective Jan. 1, California employers will be restricted from asking about, seeking or using a California applicant or employee's juvenile criminal history in the employment context.

An amendment to California Labor Code 432.7, the law prohibits employers from asking an applicant to disclose information concerning or related to any criminal activity that took place when the individual was a juvenile and seeking, from any source, any record concerning or related to the person 's criminal history in his or her juvenile years.

Under the current law, preexisting portions of the code section allow an employer to inquire into, seek and use certain convictions.

A Cook County Circuit Court in Chicago recently issued a final approval for a $1.5 million settlement between L.A. Tan Enterprises Inc. and a class of the franchise's customers who claim it failed to properly handle their biometric information.

This is the first settlement reached under the Biometric Information Privacy Act requiring companies to gain consent before collecting a person's biometric data.

The lawsuit claimed that L.A. Tan did not obtain written consent from customers to use data obtained through fingerprint technology, rather than key fob identification. The settlement states that L.A. Tan will use the $1.5 million to put a process in place to comply with the Illinois statute or destroy all biometric data and pay each individual a check of $125.

Other similar suits include accusations that California companies used facial recognition software to collect biometric data.

Last month, Rite Aid, the online phramacy chain, iled a motion to dismiss a proposed Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) class-action in the District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
 
The complaint states that the business violated the FCRA by failing to allow job applicants to challenge inaccurate or misleading reports after they were rejected for employment. Rite Aid, however, claims the case should be dismissed since the Plaintiff, Kyra Moore, already settled claims with the background screening company.
 
Prior to applying for a position with Rite Aid, Moore was dismissed from her job at CVS when a loss prevention officer confronted her about missing store stock. When she applied for a job with Rite Aid, background screening was performed by Lexus Nexus, which revealed a statement signed by Moore, regarding the theft at CVS. A copy of that statement was not provided to the Plaintiff.
 
Moore already has filed two class actions and an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission proceeding, claiming that Lexus Nexus acted as Rite Aid's agent for purposes of the FCRA.