To: The United States House of Representatives and The United States Senate

Do Not Allow Credit Checks to Stop People From Entering the Workforce!

Credit checks for employment needlessly harm those who need jobs most. People’s experiences with medical debt, student debt, or other economically challenging circumstances should not stop them from getting a job. Please support Senator Elizabeth Warren’s mission to end this appalling practice through the Equal Employment for All Act.

Why is this important?

Credit reports were originally developed to assist financial creditors in considering the degree of risk involved in lending assets to would-be borrowers. Over time, however, employers began using personal credit histories as a means to assess job worthiness and character. Today nearly half of all employers conduct credit checks as a condition of employment, including for a number of non-financial jobs such as home aide services, maintenance, and telephone technical support. Job candidates and employees have limited legal recourse to object to this practice.

No definitive body of research correlates the usage of employment credit checks, and poor credit histories specifically, to any real or perceived measure of job performance. Poor credit most significantly reflects one or a combination of three challenges: unemployment, a lack of health insurance, and medical debt.

Employment credit checks benefit no one. They do not separate productive versus unproductive workers. They do not speak to employee competence. They cannot predict illegal behaviors while on the job, nor can they assess individual responsibility away from it.

The material effects of employment credit checks are nothing for anyone to be proud of. Individual privacy is invaded. Poor and/or minority candidates are disproportionately discriminated against. As a result, able-bodied workers remain excluded from the workforce, which keeps them from earning the very income that they need in order to improve upon the credit histories that impair their job prospects.

Employment in America should not operate in this manner. No American should live in fear of being passed over for gainful employment due to circumstances that stand beyond their control and are largely unrelated to their potential job performance.

Senator Elizabeth Warren seeks to put an end to the practice of employment credit checks, through the Equal Employment for All Act. Stand in support of this cause by signing this petition today!