Hunton Employment & Labor Perspectives

Employers who conduct background checks on applicants or employees must comply with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), 15 U.S.C. § 1681 et seq.  Among other things, the FCRA requires employers who procure criminal background reports (“consumer reports”) to provide applicants and employees with a Summary of Rights form as prepared by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) when providing them with the FCRA-required pre-adverse action notices. See 15 U.S.C. § 1681b(b)(3)(A)(ii).

On March 17, 2023, the CFPB released an updated Summary of Rights form, which must be provided to consumers in connection with procurement of consumer reports, beginning March 20, 2024. The updated form can be found in English and Spanish on the CFPB’s website, here.  The new form contains revised address and contact information for various federal agencies, as well as other non-substantive changes (such as fixing a typo in the old form and changing address formats from, for example, “N.W.” to “NW”).

In observing the CFPB website activity over the past month, we note that the CFPB has further edited the updated form at least once since unveiling the new form on March 17  (for example, the new form was recently updated to include the word “Consumer” in the title of the “Office of Aviation Consumer Protection”).  This suggests to us that the CFPB may still be revising and perfecting the new form despite having unveiled it on March 17. Accordingly, it may be prudent for employers to delay implementing the new form for at least sixty (60) days from now to be sure any tag-along edits by CFPB are captured. But it is essential that the new form as posted on the CFPB’s website be implemented no later than March 20, 2024.