The alleged Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) violations against CoreLogic National Background Data LLC (CoreLogic) won’t be going away. A Virginia federal court ruled that CoreLogic’s business does indeed fall under the FCRA, stating, “The undisputed documentary evidence from [CoreLogic] establishes that, in practice, [CoreLogic] has freely recognized that the background checks that it provides are indeed ‘consumer reports’ pertaining to individual consumers within the meaning of the FCRA.”

Lead plaintiffs, Tyrone Henderson and James O. Hines, Jr., allege that CoreLogic sabotaged their employment opportunities when Henderson’s potential employer mistook another person’s criminal background check for his and when Hines’s potential employer thought that he was a registered sex offender in Indiana when in fact he had no such offenses on his record.

CoreLogic claimed that because they create background check documents and then sell access to the information to screening companies, which then in turn sell the background checks to employers, CoreLogic is not covered by the FCRA. However, the court found that this “logic” (no pun intended) is flawed in that the FCRA promotes accuracy and fairness in consumer reports. So if you are a business that prepares consumer reports (even if you aren’t providing them directly to employers or financial institutions), be aware of the FCRA requirements.