California Criminal Record Change Complicates Background Screening (UPDATE)
The court case impacting the changes was not heard by the appeals court so now the courts are making changes that impact all of us.
Here is a summary of the case in question...
In All of Us or None v. Hamrick, the plaintiffs, including a civil and human rights organization supporting ex-offenders, alleged that Riverside County and its executive officer and clerk allowed users of the Riverside Superior Court’s public website to search the court’s electronic criminal case index by inputting a defendant’s known date of birth and driver’s license number, in violation Rule 2.507. Rule 2.507 specifies the information to be included in and excluded from court calendars, indexes, and registers of actions.
The courts throughout California are removing the full dates of birth from their public access terminals and from the computer systems of the clerks.
Searches by full name and partial date of birth (MM/??/YYYY) are still possible. If the subject you are searching is clear of hits then all is good. If you have a possible hit now a case docket must be requested.
In Los Angeles County the clerks are returning docket requests in approximately 5-business days, which is pretty good. The challenging thing is that each courthouse in Los Angeles County has different rules on how many dockets can be requested per day. Some clerks are limiting researchers to five (5) cases per day while others are not limiting requests.
In San Luis Obispo County the courthouse is closed to the public, so even searches must be sent in via email, fax or mail. Once those come back with hits then dockets must be requested.
The impact to employers is slower turnaround time and potentially increased costs. This is tough especially when employers are staffing up and trying to get people to work so quickly.