The Fair Credit Reporting Act requires that employers provide prospective applicants with a disclosure before obtaining a pre-employment background check from a consumer reporting agency. This disclosure must be in a single document that consists “solely of the disclosure” that a consumer report may be obtained for employment purposes. In Burnthorne-Martinez v. Sephora USA, Inc., the District Court for the Northern District of California recently struggled with what it means to be a single document in the digital age.
Specifically, the defendants’ disclosure to the plaintiff appeared on a single webpage. The first section of the webpage was entitled “Certification and Release,” while the second section was entitled “Background Release Form Disclosure and Consent.” The plaintiff argued that the webpage comprises a single document, and the inclusion of a “Certification and Release” section on the same webpage as the background check disclosure ran afoul of the FCRA’s “solely of the disclosure” requirement.
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