Oops .. we got scooped!  Thankfully it was by my friend Judy Greenwald over at Business Insurance who called to ask me about the new decision just out of the federal court in Maryland which castigated the EEOC in a criminal background check case.  I sheepishly confessed that I had not yet seen it — she dutifully emailed it to me, and after a quick read I pontificated sagely.

She wrote that “The focus of the ruling is the criminal background check policy of Dallas-based Freeman Decorating Services Inc., a family-owned company with 3,500 full-time and 25,000 part-time and seasonal workers that provides integrated services for expositions and other events.”

She said that the Court “harshly criticized the statistical evidence presented by the EEOC to support its charges, and said the agency had also failed to identify the specific policy or policies that caused the alleged impact.  He also said the EEOC has put many employers in the position of choosing between exposing themselves to potential liability by ignoring criminal history and credit backgrounds or ‘incurring the wrath of the EEOC.’”

Her article is at: http://www.businessinsurance.com/article/20130812/NEWS07/130819982?tags=|70|75|303