California Fair Chance Act: The Employer's Steps

The nine steps at a glance

California's Fair Chance Act, in force since January 1, 2018, is the state's ban-the-box law. It sits inside the Fair Employment and Housing Act at Government Code section 12952, and the Civil Rights Department (CRD) enforces it through a long regulation, 2 CCR § 11017.1. The short version for a hiring manager: no conviction questions until you have made an offer, and no rescinding that offer over a conviction until you have weighed it against the actual job, told the applicant in writing, and given them time to answer.

It does not replace the FCRA. If a screening firm runs the check, every federal step still applies: the stand-alone disclosure, the pre-adverse notice with the Summary of Rights, the final notice. California adds content to those letters and a response window you can count to the day. Our pre-adverse and adverse action notice guide lays the federal and California letters side by side.

Who the law covers

The threshold is five employees, public or private. The regulation reads “applicant” widely: a person who started work before you got around to the background check is still an applicant, and so is a current employee who applies for a different role or is screened because new owners changed the policy. Working someone for a week before the check does not get you out of the process.

The exemptions are narrow. The before-offer ban does not apply to state or local agencies that must check by law, criminal justice agencies, farm labor contractors, or a job where a federal, state or local law (FINRA-type rules count) requires the employer to run a criminal check or restrict who it hires. A licensing board's check of the worker is not enough. Even exempt employers still owe the rest of the section, including the records you may never use and the adverse-impact rules.

Before the offer: what to strip out

In practice that means four clean-ups: the conviction checkbox comes off the application, the recruiter stops Googling candidates for arrest stories, the screening order waits for the signed offer, and the “clean record” line goes from every posting template. The CRD publishes a voluntary statement you can put in ads instead, inviting qualified applicants with records and explaining that the check comes after a conditional offer.

Two traps catch careful employers. If you did ask too early, you may not later hold the applicant's silence against them. And if an applicant volunteers their history in an interview, you still may not weigh it until after the offer. One narrow carve-out: IRS Form 8850 for the Work Opportunity Tax Credit may be collected before the offer, used only for the credit and kept in a separate confidential file.

Records you may never use

These categories are off limits at every stage, not only in hiring. A federal background report can lawfully include some of them (arrest records, for instance, under the FCRA's seven-year rule), so in California the employer has to set them aside even when the report shows them. Ask your screening firm to suppress them for California positions, and tell the hiring manager not to read the report's raw pages.

Local ordinances can add limits on top (the regulation says so in § 11017.1(b)(7)). If you hire in a city with its own fair chance law, check our ban-the-box laws by state and city before you finalize the California process. The background check lookback checker shows how far back a report may reach.

The individualized assessment

The test is the job, not the person in the abstract. A theft conviction can matter for a bookkeeper with the bank logins and not at all for a night-shift picker who never touches money. Write the specific duties down first, then ask whether this offense, this long ago, bears on those duties. A professional license the applicant already holds for the job counts as evidence that the record is not directly related to it.

If the applicant has already sent you anything, a certificate from a training program or a letter from a former supervisor, you must weigh it now, in the first assessment. You may not ask for it, though. Our individualized assessment guide has a printable worksheet with the California, EEOC and New York factors on one sheet and a worked example.

The preliminary notice

If the assessment leans toward rescinding, the applicant gets a written preliminary notice. Note item (B): “report” is broad. If a manager found a news story and it shaped the decision, the story goes in the envelope. Most employers send this notice with the FCRA pre-adverse package (the report copy and the CFPB's Summary of Your Rights) so that one delivery starts both clocks.

The adverse action letter generator drafts the federal and California letters together, and the CRD's own sample packet has a preliminary notice you can compare it against.

The response window, counted from receipt

The clock starts on receipt, not on the day you send. Untracked mail is the slow route: to another state it costs ten calendar days before the five business days even begin. Email adds two business days, and tracked delivery pins receipt to the real delivery date, which is worth it when a start date is close. You may always give more than five days.

In the email case the notice counts as received on Wednesday the 13th; the five business days are the 14th, the 15th, the 19th, the 20th and the 21st, so the earliest final decision is Friday the 22nd. A written dispute pushes it a further five business days, to Friday the 29th. The federal practice wait (five business days, from a 1997 FTC staff letter, not the statute) usually runs inside the California window, so the California date is the one to watch. The adverse action timeline calculator runs these counts for any date.

Reassessment and the final notice

Whatever the applicant sends, you must consider it before deciding. When it is evidence of rehabilitation, the regulation lets you weigh, beyond the three factors, their conduct while incarcerated, work history since the conviction or sentence, community service and engagement, and any other rehabilitative effort. If they show the record is wrong, the wrong entry drops out of the decision. If, after that, the record no longer bears on the job, confirm the hire in writing.

Where a screening firm's report was involved, this letter also carries the FCRA's adverse action elements: the firm's name, address and phone number, a statement that the firm did not make the decision, and the right to a free copy within 60 days and to dispute the report. Both sets fit in one letter. The notice guide lists every federal element.

The file to keep

The CRD's sample forms packet (August 2025 edition) has a template for nearly every row: a compliance statement for ads, the conditional offer, an individual assessment form, the preliminary notice, an individual reassessment form and the final notice. Using them is optional; matching their contents is not. Keep criminal history information confidential and use it only for the decision it was gathered for, and when you dispose of a screening report, shred it or make the file unreadable.

Questions employers ask