June

In early April, Target agreed to revise guidelines for how it screens people seeking jobs at its stores.  The step is intended to quell complaints that the retailer discriminates against black and Hispanic applicants with criminal records that can include offenses too minor or old to affect their performance as employees.

According to Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Legal Defense and Education Fund, said that the background check policy was not compliant with best practices and didn 't give applicants a fair chance at a good job.

The agreement not only addresses a series of complaints filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) by Carnella Times, but also seeks to resolve a potential class action filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan by her legal defense, as well.

The company agreed to contribute $3.7 million to a settlement fund.

Forty-one-year-old Cindy White of Louisiana was found guilty of identity theft after she used another woman's ID to get a job at Diversified Food and Seasonings and was promoted to a senior position with a six-figure salary.

White was accused of emptying a co-worker's bank account through identity theft while working for the Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office in 1997. She pleaded guilty that year to two counts of forgery but her probation ended in 1999 when "the court received information that she was deceased," Montgomery said.

Diversified Food and Seasonings hired White in 2015 as a human resources manager at $95,000 a year, and promoted her five months later to a $105,000 position as senior human resources director. Her fraud was exposed after the company realized she was having trouble with jobs that should have been within her claimed ability, and was delegating much of her work.  

Investigators found she had copied another woman's resume from LinkedIn and stolen her identity numbers from another website. The other woman had a name similar to White's.  White admitted in a statement to investigators that she fraudulently cited the victim's educational experience and Social Security number to get the job.  Her attorney argued in court that White earned the $56,200 she was paid, according to the news release.

A recent settlement by Target reinforces the importance of employers to be vigilant with all applicable laws pertaining to criminal record screening policies.

Plaintiffs in the case allege that Target's criminal-record-screening policies had a disparate impact on African-American and Latino job applicants for store positions. The claim centered on the standards for assessing ex-offender job applicants as eligible or ineligible for employment. Over a period of several years, the parties negotiated a pre-litigation class-wide settlement that must be approved by a federal court.

In early April, a settlement submitted by the plaintiff's attorneys would require programmatic relief in addition to a monetary payment.