An employer may want to know if job applicants have criminal records. A competing interest favors rehabilitation by ensuring small past mistakes do not doom good workers to a lifetime of impoverished employment opportunities. The California Legislature has been active in adjusting the boundary between these clashing concerns. A key statute, repeatedly amended, is section 432.7 of the Labor Code, which we call the Nondisclosure Statute.
In simple terms, the Nondisclosure Statute prohibits employers from asking applicants about certain kinds of criminal convictions. The statute also makes exceptions to the general prohibition. We construe this statute and conclude no exception defeats the general prohibition on the facts of this case. This means the defendant and appellant employer in this case — the Los Angeles Unified School District — violated the Nondisclosure Statute when it rejected two applicants based on their expunged misdemeanor convictions.
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