By a 4-1 vote, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) on April 25, 2012, approved a new guidance on criminal background checks.

Consolidating and superseding previous EEOC guidance on criminal background checks, the guidance discourages blanket exclusions of individuals who have been convicted of crimes and encourages the use of individualized assessments of whether an employer’s criminal conduct exclusion is job related and consistent with business necessity.