If you have been using linked in as part of your employment screening program, to vet education verification, employment verification, etc., then don’t. The court has ruled that Linked-In Background checks are not FCRA compliant.
According to the article in SHRM…”Employers who use LinkedIn’s reference search function are not required to comply with Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) requirements, a federal court ruled April 14, 2015.
The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California dismissed a complaint alleging FCRA violations based on LinkedIn’s reference search function. The tool generates a list of individuals who previously worked with a job applicant.
In Sweet et al. v. LinkedIn Corporation, a group of rejected job applicants sued LinkedIn and argued that the function did not comply with FCRA requirements.
Tracee Sweet submitted her resume to a potential employer through LinkedIn, went through an interview and was told that she would be hired, but was then told the company had changed its mind because of a reference check. Sweet later learned that the check may have been conducted using LinkedIn’s reference search function. Each plaintiff had a similar experience and, believing that the LinkedIn tool cost them jobs, they filed suit against the company.
“At the crux of the complaint was the plaintiffs’ argument that LinkedIn was acting as a consumer reporting agency (CRA) under the FCRA, and that reference searches were consumer reports,” said Angela Preston, vice president of compliance and general counsel at background screening company EmployeeScreenIQ.
LinkedIn moved to dismiss, arguing that the report generated by the function was not a consumer report as defined by the FCRA and that LinkedIn was not a consumer reporting agency under the law. The court agreed. “LinkedIn’s publications of employment histories of the consumers who are the subjects of the Reference Searches are not consumer reports because the information contained in these histories came solely from LinkedIn’s transactions or experiences with these same consumers,” the court said. The FCRA excludes from the definition of consumer report any report “containing information solely as to transactions or experiences between the consumer and the person making the report.”
– See more at: http://www.shrm.org/hrdisciplines/staffingmanagement/articles/pages/linkedin-searches-background-checks.aspx?sthash.axXxtBCH.mjjo#sthash.axXxtBCH.ZCX1Ldph.dpuf
