Strong legislation such as Senator Elizabeth Warren’s Equal Employment for All Act and New York State Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz’s Credit Privacy in Employment Act represents a growing awareness that the use of employment credit checks is unfair and can have a discriminatory impact in any industry or position. As University of Illinois professor Robert Lawless notes, “human nature makes us want to believe that credit reports must tell us something about the person involved... The fundamental attribution error makes us want to believe they can do so, but there is almost no evidence to support that notion.”11 New York City has a genuine opportunity to lead the nation in a progressive direction by enacting the nation’s strongest law prohibiting credit discrimination. Enacting Intro 261 without weakening it with unjustified exemptions would offer a model for the rest of the nation to follow.
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For a more extensive discussion of the problems associated with employment credit checks, see: Amy Traub, “Discredited: How Employment Credit Checks Keep Qualified Workers out of a Job,” Demos, 2013. http://www.demos.org/discredited-how-employment-credit-checks-keep-qualified-workers-out-job
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See “Hartford Council Bans Employee Credit Checks,” The Hartford Guardian, May 13, 2011. http://www.thehartfordguardian.com/2011/05/13/hartford-council-bans-employee-credit-checks/
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United States Senate: S.1837-Equal Employment for All Act of 2013. https://beta.congress.gov/bill/113th- congress/senate-bill/1837
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New York State Assembly: A7056-2013. http://open.nysenate.gov/legislation/bill/A7056-2013
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The ten states with laws in effect as of September 2014 are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Nevada, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington.
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Andrew Martin, “As a Hiring Filter, Credit Checks Draw Questions,” the New York Times, April 9, 2010.
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Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, “Report to the Congress on Credit Scoring and Its
Effects on the Availability and Affordability of Credit,” 2007; Federal Trade Commission, “Credit-Based Insurance Scores: Impacts on Consumers of Automobile Insurance,” 2007; Robert B. Avery, Paul S. Calem, and Glenn B. Canner, “Credit Report Accuracy and Access to Credit,” Federal Reserve Bulletin, 2004; Matt Fellowes, “Credit Scores, Reports, and Getting Ahead in America,” Brooking Institution, 2006.
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Jacob S. Rugh and Douglas S. Massey, “Racial Segregation and the American Foreclosure Crisis” American Sociological Review, Volume 75 Number 5 October 2010; Andrew Jakabovics and Jeff Chapman, “Unequal Opportunity Lenders? Analyzing Racial Disparities in Big Banks’ Higher-Priced Lending,” Center for American Progress, 2009. http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/housing/report/2009/09/15/6704/ unequal-opportunity-lenders/
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For example, see Robin Pyle, “Bad credit could hurt your chances of becoming a police officer,” Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, September 26, 2010. http://lubbockonline.com/local-news/2010-09-26/bad-credit- could-hurt-your-chances-becoming-police-officer
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Laura Koppes Bryan and Jerry K. Palmer, “Do JobApplicant Credit Histories Predict Performance Appraisal Ratings or Termination Decisions?” The Psychologist-Manager Journal, 2012.
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Robert Lawless, “The Evidence on Pre-Employment Credit Checks,” Credit Slips (blog) January 2, 2014. http://www.creditslips.org/creditslips/2014/01/the-evidence-on-pre-employment-credit-checks.html