Lawsuit Targets Census for Shutting Doors on Workers of Color

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/6487/lawsuit_targets_census_for_unfairly_shutting_doors_on_workers_of_color/

Thursday September 30 8:09 am

By Michelle Chen



When the Census Bureau mobilized thousands of workers to survey neighborhoods around the country, it prioritized job creation as well as outreach to historically undercounted communities. Months later, the statistics are rolling out, and so is a stream of evidence that for all the talk of a more inclusive census, the government's hiring practices systematically discriminated against people of color.

Though the census project helped offset the unemployment crisis temporarily, activists say it shut out countless applicants through an arbitrary and racially discriminatory screening process.

According to a major class-action lawsuit, applicants were unfairly singled out if their names turned up in a notoriously inaccurate federal criminal database. In effect, the background checks blocked virtually anyone with an arrest record. This included with arrests that never led to conviction; older adults with long-forgotten juvenile delinquency records; or activists who once got a slap on the wrist at an antiwar protest.

Now, rejected workers have brought a federal lawsuit accusing the government of systemic employment discrimination in violation of the Civil Rights Act. Since people of color are vastly overrepresented in the criminal justice system, the suit charges that the excessively harsh background checks reproduce overarching patterns of racial discrimination.

According to the complaint, the Census Bureau's screening system automatically siphoned out anyone with an arrest record, regardless of whether a conviction followed. In order to move on with the hiring process, applicants would need to provide court documentation of their case within a 30-day window. That hurdle knocked out a full 93 percent of applicants, or 700,000 people. The remaining applicants were then subject to “an arbitrary and irrational screen” that targeted “even those who had never been convicted, those who had their records officially expunged, and those with very minor and old offenses.”

FULL story at link.