LYFT WILL BE BEEFING UP BACKGROUND CHECKS AFTER DRIVER ARRESTED FOR RAPE: This is a real land mine area for employers (or anything that looks like an employer). You can be damned if you do or damned if you don’t. If you check into a job applicant’s criminal record, you may end up being held in violation of Title VII. (Somehow we got ourselves into the position of believing that an employer who wouldn’t dream of discriminating on the basis of race is engaged in race discrimination if he or she checks into whether job applicants have criminal records.)   If you don’t check, and something bad happens, you may be liable for negligent hiring or for the underlying harm via respondent superior.

If you are interested in just how messed up the law is here, I wrote about it in connection with a report of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights a few years ago.