Last week, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) was hit with a class action alleging violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) for not sufficiently notifying job applicants of its use of credit checks, as well as violations of the Pennsylvania Criminal History Record Information Act by discriminating against applicants convicted of drug felonies. Class representative, Frank Long, claims that he (along with thousands more) did not receive the required written disclosures under the FCRA, and were subject to a blanket policy of rejecting all applicants with a felony job conviction if the position applied for involved operating a vehicle. Long was convicted of drug possession and manufacturing in 1997; however, Long argues that the conviction should not have had any effect on the bus driver position he applied for because of the nature of the crime and the length of time which had gone by without any further convictions. The suit seeks to represent all SEPTA job applicants denied consumer report disclosures within the last two years and all applicants denied vehicle maintenance or non-paratransit driving job based on drug convictions more than seven years old. The lesson here is to know FCRA requirements and to keep up to speed on your state’s laws, too.

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