Do Business with the Federal Government? Stop Asking About Applicants’ Criminal Histories

In case you missed it, urgent care centers and other healthcare employers who have contracts with the federal government are now forbidden from asking prospective employees’ about their criminal history on applications or in the interview process. In fact, you’re not allowed to raise the question before you offer someone the job. The first time you’re allowed to raise the question is when you make a conditional offer of employment—after which you could open yourself to legal risk if you rescind the offer upon learning of the candidate’s criminal past. This extension of the Fair Chance Act has been referred to as the Ban the Box law. Bloomberg News published an in-depth explanation of the nuances, but one important thing to note is that urgent care operators are not barred from conducting background checks, which has become standard practice for some employers in the industry. For our part, JUCM ran an article on the relative merits of digging into certain aspects of a candidate’s history in an article entitled Should an Urgent Care Operator Check the National Sex Offender Registry When Hiring Employees? It’s available in our archive right now.