Important Notice for
California Employers

                                                                          California DOB Redaction Information

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Because of the decision in the All of Us or None – Riverside Chapter vs. W. Samuel Hamrick, Clerk case, California Superior courts have been removing the date-of-birth search field from their online portals and their public-access terminals in the court houses. This causes a severe impact on background screening because the only identifier remaining on the publicly available record is often name, which is not enough to positively tie an individual to the record. See the updates below regarding specific CA counties.

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• Kern, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Joaquin, Ventura: As of August 20, these counties have removed date of birth from their online portals and their public-access terminals.

• Alameda, Fresno, Monterey, Tulare, Santa Clara, Yuba: These counties have removed date of birth from their online portals, but NOT their public-access terminals.

• San Bernardino: San Bernardino is working to end use of its current portal and terminals and switch to a  system that will NOT give access to date of birth.

• Los Angeles: LA County has issued a new policy, under which clerks will NOT verify full date of birth. This announcement limits access to month and year of birth on the record.  

 

As of August 24, 2021, clerks are still verifying date of birth in person at the remaining jurisdictions listed above. However, current processes are causing severe delays – over 30 days in some courts. No background screener can avoid these delays.

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The Professional Background Screening Association (PBSA) submitted an appeal to the California Supreme Court on July 15, 2021, which the Court declined to review on September 1. This means courts in California will continue redacting date of birth from both online and public access terminals. It is also possible clerks will stop providing assistance to verify full dates of birth, as is the case in Los Angeles County. The PBSA continues to make efforts to pursue legislation and changes to the handling of date of births on court records. 

 

The PBSA continues to make efforts to pursue legislation and changes to the handling of date of births on court records.  On February 17th, 2022 California Senate Bill 1262 was introduced by Senator Steven Bradford, in large part due to the efforts of the Consumer Data Industry Association and some joint members of PBSA. This bill would require publicly accessible electronic indexes of defendants in criminal cases to permit searches and filtering of results based on the defendant’s driver’s license number or date of birth, or both.

 

SB 1262 passed the Senate with unanimous support on May 24th. July 1st is the deadline for passage from the Assembly committee and August 31st is the final deadline for passage in the Assembly.