Paul Tassin  |  July 18, 2017

Category: Labor & Employment

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Disney ADA class action lawsuitDisneyland must now face two certified Classes of job applicants who claim their background checks did not comply with the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

California Superior Court Judge Ann I. Jones granted the plaintiffs’ motion for class certification on Thursday, giving plaintiffs Roger Culberson II and Edward Joseph III a substantial advantage in their Disney class action lawsuit.

The two plaintiffs claim Disneyland has made hundreds of adverse employment decisions based on job applicants’ background check reports without giving those applicants the proper notifications required under the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act, or FCRA.

Culberson says he was denied employment at Disneyland after a background check erroneously showed he was convicted of battery in 2010. The actual conviction date was in 1998, he says, and 2010 was the date the conviction was expunged from his record.

Without proper notice, he was unable to correct the error before Disneyland denied him employment, he claims.

The FCRA provisions at issue here require prospective employers to make certain disclosures to job applicants so that they will have a reasonable chance to contest any erroneous information contained in their background check report.

Under the act, when a potential employer uses a “consumer report” to evaluate a job applicant, the employer must give the applicant a copy of the report and a notice of their rights under the FCRA before taking any adverse action based on the report’s contents.

Culberson and Joseph claim Disneyland has been violating this FCRA provision by sending the required notice to applicants after making a “No Hire” determination, instead of before.

The FCRA also prohibits a prospective employer from procuring a consumer report on an applicant without first disclosing to the applicant that such a report may be obtained for employment purposes. This disclosure must be “clear and conspicuous” and provided in a stand-alone written document that consists solely of the disclosure itself.

According to Culberson and Joseph, the disclosure form that Disneyland offered to its applicants contained extraneous information that by law should not have been there. That extra information supposedly included a purported waiver of liability, requiring the applicant to accept that “all employment decisions are based on legitimate non-discriminatory reasons.”

Judge Jones’s order certifies two different Classes, each of which covers Disneyland job applicants who were affected under one of the two FCRA provisions at issue.

Class Members from both Classes will be U.S. residents who were the subject of a report that Disneyland solicited for employment purposes from Sterling Infosystems Inc. between Nov. 1, 2011 and the present.

The “Pre-Adverse Action Notice Class” will include all such persons who were subject to a “No Hire” recommendation made on the basis of the contents of that report. The “Defective Disclosure Class” will cover persons who were the subject of these reports and who executed a consent form identical to the one at issue.

Culberson and Joseph are represented by attorneys Devin H. Fok of DHF Law PC and V. Andre Sherman of Girardi Keese Law Firm.

The Disneyland Background Check FCRA Class Action Lawsuit is Roger L. Culberson II and Edward Joseph III v. The Walt Disney Co., Case No. BC526351, in the Superior Court of the State of California, County of Los Angeles.

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