Editorial–Legislators should stop mandating how Uber conducts background checks

After several years of tumultuous debate, the big questions surrounding the basic legality of ridesharing services like Lyft and Uber have essentially been resolved. In most major American cities, we now are free to pull out our smartphones and summon a ride to karaoke night without much hindrance.

But there are still some looming issues in state and local transportation policy, particularly over whether ridesharing companies should be required to run their drivers through federal fingerprint background checks before hiring them. In just the last year, we’ve seen heated debates over this question in Austin, Houston, Boston, Maryland and New York. The latest battleground is Connecticut, where the state legislature faces calls from the taxi and limousine commissions to include mandatory fingerprinting as part of a larger ridesharing regulation bill.