SELECTiON.COM® is closely following a court decision adversely affecting consumers and employers.
On Wednesday, September 1, 2021 the California Supreme Court denied review in the matter of All of Us or None vs. Hamrick. The Professional Background Screening Association (PBSA), Consumer Data Industry Association (CDIA) and dozens of other organizations filed an amicus letter with the California Supreme Court on July 15, asking the Court to take up the Fourth Appellate District’s Hamrick opinion on the grounds that it misconstrued several rules of court as barring the use of identifiers such as DOB and driver’s license number as search filters for use in locating online criminal records.
This denial means that we will continue to see courts in California redacting date of birth from both their online and public access terminals. It is also very possible that court clerks will stop providing clerk assistance to verify full dates of birth – as we have recently seen in Los Angeles County. Criminal-records checks in California will continue to become more difficult, and in some cases impossible.
We will be keeping up with this issue and the PBSA’s Government Relations Date-of-Birth Redaction Task Force as they now begin execute two potential alternative paths to resolution.
1. Work with the California Judicial Council to modify the rule.
2. Create a legislative campaign to introduce statutory changes that requires the Judicial Council to modify the rule.
However, even if successful, the outcome is not likely to happen for another year. We will notify you as soon as there is additional information available.
