Esta Bigler, director of Labor Law and Employment Programs at the ILR School, presented on the topic of fair chance hiring at the New York State Bar Association\u2019s Labor and Employment Law Section fall meeting, held in Ithaca earlier this month.\u00a0<\/p>\n
An audience of nearly 25 lawyers attended the presentation, where they learned how ban-the-box rules, the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act, New York Correction Law 23-A, the New York State Human Rights Law, the Clean Slate Law, and the Marijuana Regulation and Taxation Act all affect employment decisions.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany labor and employment lawyers have never even heard of some of these laws,\u201d Bigler said. \u201cOur purpose was to educate attorneys, whether for their own practice or as they provide counsel to their clients about hiring justice-impacted individuals.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bigler<\/a> emphasized that criminal-record status is protected under New York State law and that employers must evaluate candidates through the required legal steps rather than rely on assumptions about felony or misdemeanor convictions.\u00a0<\/p>\n Roughly 2.1 million New Yorkers have a criminal record, with approximately 86,700 individuals on probation or parole supervision.\u00a0<\/p>\n The presentation was based on a previous eCornell Keynote, Hiring and Retaining the Justice-Impacted<\/a>, in which Bigler and Jodi Anderson Jr.<\/a>, director of technological innovation at the Criminal Justice and Employment Initiative, educated HR professionals on building stronger, more inclusive workplaces by hiring and retaining employees with criminal records.<\/p>\n