Bipartisan legislation (HR-3470 and S-2021) aims to end the practice of requiring applicants for federal jobs to disclose in their initial applications whether they have a criminal history, a tool that agencies commonly use to screen out candidates early.
The Fair Chance Act would generally ban the federal government–including the executive, legislative, and judicial branches–from requesting criminal history information from applicants until they reach the conditional offer of employment stage. There would be exceptions for positions related to law enforcement and national security duties, positions requiring access to classified information, and positions for which access to criminal history information before the conditional offer stage is required by law.
Similar provisions would apply to government contractors.
Sponsors say that more than 70 million Americans have criminal records and that disclosing that history results in a 50 percent less chance of the applicant getting a callback from the employer.
