INDUSTRY NEWS

8/19 Update: California Court of Appeal Recently Rules that Date of Birth and Driver's License Number Cannot Be Used as Data to Identify a Criminal Defendant in Public Records

This ruling was issued May 26, 2021 and can be accessed here.

As of August 18, 2021, the Supreme Court of California issued notice that review of the Hamrick decision should be completed by September 30, 2021. Truescreen will issue another update when more details become available.

The California Court of Appeal recently held in All of Us or None of Us v. Hamrick that an individual's date of birth and driver's license number cannot be used as data that identifies a criminal defendant when searching public record.

Currently, the ruling only directly affects Riverside County; however, other courts in California have been influenced by this decision and have also removed such information from criminal records.

Riverside County has not yet provided any guidance on the ruling.

Truescreen is working with the courts to determine the ID matches for cases with records and ensure clients have access to reliable information. Please note, background check results in some counties, especially Riverside County, may be delayed due to these limitations.

Truescreen will continue to monitor this rule's impact on Riverside County and other California court search processing and turnaround times. Our industry is advocating against this ruling to become law given the impact it will have on employers due to possible extended turnaround times to confirm positive matches. We will keep our clients posted on best practices regarding these updated rules for court record retrieval to turnaround searches as quickly as possible, given the circumstances.

If you have any questions, please contact your sales executive, account manager, or our customer service team.

Updated: August 19, 2021