California Civil Rights Department Sues Ralphs Over Alleged Job Revocations From Ex-Cons

The California Civil Rights Department filed a lawsuit against Southern California grocery store chain Ralphs on Thursday, citing that they violated the Fair Chance Act and rescinded job offers from those who were found to have prior convictions or jail time.

First coming into law in 2018, the Fair Chance Act aimed at reducing employment barriers to formerly incarcerated job applicants by having companies first extend a conditional job offer before running a background check. After the check, if there is incarceration found, then they can only rescind the offer if it comes into conflict with the job they were conditionally offered.

Since coming into effect, lawmakers have sought to strengthen the law due to formerly incarcerated applicants still experiencing “discrimination” and denied jobs due to loopholes in the 2018 law. However, before Thursday, the CRD had yet to file a lawsuit against companies for violating the law, with only a few settlements being made. This changed on Thursday, when the CRD sued Ralphs, a subsidiary of Kroger.

According to the CRD, complaints against Ralphs started after the law went into effect, with the Department attempting mediation sessions in 2020 and officially launching an investigation the next year. After two years, the CRD sued Ralphs. The suit, known as California Civil Rights Department v. Ralphs Grocery Company, is asking the grocery chain for compensatory damages, including lost wages and benefits and mental and emotional distress.

A statement by CRD on Thursday said:

“In the lawsuit filed before the Los Angeles County Superior Court, CRD alleges that Ralphs repeatedly violated the Fair Chance Act’s procedural and substantive requirements and has done so since the law’s enactment. For instance, information obtained by CRD in its investigation indicated that multiple candidates lost their job offers based on convictions for a single misdemeanor count of excessive noise. Other applicants who had convictions from other states for simple cannabis possession were also disqualified. These types of convictions, and hundreds more, have no adverse relationship with the duties of working at a grocery store and were not legitimate grounds for the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment.”

“Ralphs also failed to perform individualized assessments of applicants’ criminal histories, provided inadequate notification about the grounds for the revocation of a conditional job offer, and unlawfully included questions in its job application form seeking the disclosure of an applicant’s criminal history, a direct violation of the Fair Chance Act’s procedural requirements. In addition, more than 75% of job applicants who were told their job offer would be withdrawn were not provided any way to contact Ralphs to contest the decision, as legally required by the Fair Chance Act. Those who were provided a way to contact Ralphs were just given a phone number, without being told it was a fax line, who was on the other end, or what format to use to present the information.”

CRD sues Ralphs

CRD Director Kevin Kish added, “The Fair Chance Act is about giving every Californian an opportunity to thrive. When roughly 70 million Americans have some sort of record, policies like those employed by Ralphs aren’t just discriminatory and against California law, they don’t make sense. We can’t expect people to magically gain the economic and housing stability needed to reintegrate into their communities and stay out of the criminal legal system without a fair chance at steady employment, particularly when the job has nothing to do with a past offense. Ralphs has continued to unlawfully deny jobs to qualified candidates and that’s why we’re taking them to court.”

As of Thursday evening, Ralphs has yet to issue a statement on the suit. However, experts have said that CRD faces an uphill battle against Ralphs, as there are many legal ways they can claim they didn’t hire people.

“The Fair Chance Act itself is something built on good intentions that ultimately has a lot of flaws,” employment legal advisor Dean Rogers told the Globe. “But not just Ralphs but any company can easily get around this law. Does the job location have kids? Anyone convicted of a crime against them can be turned down. Arson conviction? Any place where fire is involved is out. Robbery or larceny? Any cashier job is out. And so on. Notice that the CRD has yet to have such a big lawsuit until today. Businesses have been good about this.”

“For Ralphs, they just need to tie those sort of things in. That box, that check box where they have to say they were convicted of a crime, it is still there. It just has extra steps. The CRD just doesn’t want to admit that it isn’t working and went after Ralphs it seems.”

More on the lawsuit is expected to be released in the coming weeks.