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New Laws for 2020: Senate Bill 2193 (Hawaii)

 

On September 15th, Hawaii Governor David Ige signed Senate Bill 2193 into law which impacts the state’s ban the box legislation, which has been in effect since 1998.

Prior to the passage of Senate Bill 2193, the state’s ban the box legislation had a ten year “look back” period in which employers could consider felony and misdemeanor convictions of applicants.  Any felony or misdemeanor convictions past ten years could not be considered when choosing whether to hire the applicant.  The ban the box legislation also required employers to apply a “rational relationship” test before they could deny an employment position after conducting a background check.  Under this “rational relationship” test, an employer could only consider those convictions that occurred within the ten year window if there was a “rational relationship” between the conviction and the prospective job.

Senate Bill 2193 rewrites the state’s ban the box legislation in a few ways:  1) Felonies older than seven years and misdemeanors older than five years are no longer to be considered (unless they fall within one of several statutory exemptions); and 2) a suitability determination (in regard to the relevant criminal history) may not occur until after the conditional job offer has been made.

While minimum wage legislation has been all the rage in the past few years, this is a noteworthy development in the area of ban the box legislation.


For a copy of Senate Bill 2193:  https://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/session2020/Bills/GM1156_.pdf

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