In the coming days, the California State Assembly is scheduled to vote on a crucial piece of legislation to protect the right to perform fast and accurate background checks. Senate Bill 1262, set for a final reading and vote in the coming week, will require courts to maintain public access to personal identifiers, which are necessary to match specific individuals to court records.

In early 2021, the California Court of Appeals issued a ruling in the case of All of Us or None v. Hamrick, which stated that based upon the text of Rule 2.507 of the California Rules of Court, an individual’s date of birth and driver’s license number, which are crucial personal identifiers, cannot be included in the public-facing electronic index of criminal court records. This ruling made it difficult and, in some cases, impossible for consumer reporting agencies (CRA) to perform accurate and timely background checks.

The issue stems from the fact that CRAs are required by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) to maintain reasonable procedures to ensure maximum potential accuracy. This means, among other standards, that these agencies must use multiple identifiers to ensure that a record belongs to a specific person. The first identifier used is generally an individual’s first and last name, and the second will commonly be either date of birth or driver’s license number. Without either of these two identifiers, it becomes much more difficult, and in some cases almost impossible, to perform a verified background check in line with FCRA’s requirements for compliance.

In response to these difficulties, California State Senator Steven Bradford introduced Senate Bill 1262 in February of this year. This bill will amend the California Government Code, Section 69842, to require court clerks to maintain publicly accessible electronic indexes of criminal records to include either or both the date of birth and driver’s license number of defendants. 

Specifically: “The clerk of the superior court shall keep indexes to ensure ready reference to any action or proceeding filed in the court. There shall be separate indexes of plaintiffs and defendants in civil actions and of defendants in criminal actions. The name of each plaintiff and defendant shall be indexed, and there shall appear opposite each name indexed the number of the action or proceeding and the name or names of the adverse litigant or litigants. Publicly accessible electronic indexes of defendants in criminal cases shall permit searches and filtering of results based on a defendant’s driver’s license number or date of birth, or both.”

This legislation has seen considerable support from many sectors, including most notably employers, landlords, volunteer organizations, and the Professional Background Screening Association. Earlier this year, the bill unanimously passed the State Senate, and it must be passed by the Assembly to protect the ability to perform these searches and protect the safety of all California residents.

Reach out to your assembly members today to support SB 1262: California Assembly Members Contact Information 

Source: Professional Background Screening Association