{"id":31285,"date":"2008-03-26T16:35:41","date_gmt":"2008-03-26T21:35:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/content.findlaw-admin.com\/ability-legal\/uncategorized\/fair-credit-reporting-act-sexual-harassment-investigation.html"},"modified":"2008-03-26T16:35:41","modified_gmt":"2008-03-26T21:35:41","slug":"fair-credit-reporting-act-sexual-harassment-investigation","status":"publish","type":"corporate","link":"https:\/\/corporate.findlaw.com\/business-operations\/fair-credit-reporting-act-sexual-harassment-investigation.html","title":{"rendered":"Fair Credit Reporting Act: Sexual Harassment Investigation."},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Federal Trade Commission (the "Commission") has taken the position that employers who utilize the services of outside consultants or companies to assist them in conducting a sexual or racial harassment investigation in the workplace must comply with the notification and distribution requirements of the Fair Credit Reporting Act ("FCRA"), and failure to do so will result in a violation of that statute. In an opinon letter dated April 5, 1999, the Commission stated that employers who utilize the services of these consultants, even if the investigation and information compiled is solely from the internal documents maintained by the employer, the consultant is deemed a "credit reporting agency" because it furnishes "consumer reports" to a "third party" (the employer). The Commission further noted that the information contained in internal investigative documents falls within the definition of "investigative consumer report" under the FCRA because those documents contain information on the employee's character, general reputation, personal characteristics, or mode of living. The Commission concluded that failure to abide by the specific notice and distribution requirements contained in the FCRA will result in a violation of that act.<\/p>

– COMMENT: The opinion letter contains an unclear interpretation of the FCRA which materially affects the manner in which employers may conduct background checks of applicants\/employees and how they may perform internal harassment investigations. For more information on this act, please see the January-March 1998 edition of ALERT or contact any of the attorneys listed on page 1 of this ALERT.<\/p><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Federal Trade Commission (the “Commission”) has taken the position that employers who utilize the services of outside consultants or companies to assist them in conducting a sexual or racial harassment investigation in the workplace must comply …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_stopmodifiedupdate":true,"_modified_date":"","_cloudinary_featured_overwrite":false},"corporate_categories":[6468,6467,6469],"class_list":["post-31285","corporate","type-corporate","status-publish","hentry","corporate_categories-business-operations__antitrust-trade-regulation","corporate_categories-business-operations","corporate_categories-business-operations__commercial-contracts"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/corporate.findlaw.com\/legal-api\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/corporate\/31285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/corporate.findlaw.com\/legal-api\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/corporate"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/corporate.findlaw.com\/legal-api\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/corporate"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/corporate.findlaw.com\/legal-api\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"corporate_categories","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/corporate.findlaw.com\/legal-api\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/corporate_categories?post=31285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}