Background-check decisions (FCRA)

When you decline a verification that included a consumer-report check, the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) imposes a structured set of notice obligations on the operator. The reviewer workflow surfaces compliance reminders at the moment of the decision and dims records that are not reportable under the federal lookback rule.

This guide explains how the console workflow supports the FCRA-required steps. It is not legal advice. The platform records your decision and provides the data the FCRA notices reference; the operator is responsible for sending the notices through their own channels. Consult counsel for your specific obligations.

What FCRA requires

FCRA §615(a) requires a two-step adverse-action notice process when a consumer report contributes to an adverse action against an applicant:

1. Pre-adverse-action notice: before taking the adverse action, send the applicant a copy of the consumer report and the “Summary of Your Rights Under the FCRA.” Allow a reasonable opportunity to dispute. Operator practice is commonly five business days; the FCRA does not prescribe a specific waiting period.
2. Post-adverse-action notice: after taking the adverse action, send a notice that includes the consumer reporting agency’s contact information.

Separately, EEOC guidance strongly recommends an individualized assessment rather than a blanket exclusion based on the presence of any record, which can create Title VII disparate-impact liability. State law adds further constraints, with several US states capping the reportability of non-conviction records below the federal seven-year ceiling.

Read a background-check result

Open the applicant in Dashboard → Applicants, then open the applicant whose result you want to read. Background-check findings appear in the findings panel alongside any watchlist findings.

Records carry an fcraReportableInUs flag derived from the federal FCRA reporting limits: a conviction carries no federal time limit and stays reportable, while a non-conviction record (such as an arrest) is reportable only within the past seven years. Records that are flagged non-reportable are dimmed in the findings panel. Treat the dimmed state as a hint: your applicant’s state of residence at the time of the report may impose a stricter rule that excludes additional records the federal flag did not dim.

The reviewer-manual-review guide walks the broader surface; see Manually review a verification for the decision-panel states.

Pre-adverse action

Before you click Decline in the decision panel, the platform expects the operator to have completed the FCRA pre-adverse step out-of-band. The console does not send the pre-adverse-action notice: that obligation lives with the operator’s HRIS, ATS, or notice vendor. Use the applicant detail page as the source of the report contents you reference in your notice.

Final adverse action

When you do click Decline on a verification that carries a consumer-report check, the decline form renders the Compliance reminders for background-check declines panel above the decision buttons. The panel is collapsed by default; expand it to read the four notices:

• Individualized assessment: the EEOC-recommended practice of evaluating the record case by case.
• State-specific lookback caps: the reminder that several states cap reportability below the federal rule.
• Adverse action notice obligation: the two-step §615(a) summary.
• Data protection notice: the sensitive-PII handling reminder.

The consumer-report checks are background_us_criminal, background_global, and credit_history. The panel is driven by the check registry rather than by a fixed list, so a consumer-report check added later raises the panel on the same decision without a change to the reviewer surface.

The panel appears on both reviewer surfaces: the console decision panel and the embedded reviewer. They share one component and one registry-driven condition, so an operator sees the same reminders whichever surface they work in.

The reminder panel is text-only: there is no acknowledgment checkbox and no audit event when you open it. The decline still requires you to cite at least one finding or one triggered rule; a notes-only decline is not accepted.

Credit history declines

A credit_history check produces a consumer report, so everything above applies to it unchanged: the same Compliance reminders for background-check declines panel opens above the decision buttons, on both reviewer surfaces, and the same decline write records what you cited. The reminders are written for consumer-report declines in general. Which of the four bear on a credit decision, and what your state adds, is a question for your counsel rather than something this page can answer for you.

Three things are specific to credit and worth knowing before you decide.

You can cite a credit finding as your stated reason. A credit finding is an individual fact about the applicant, so it is accepted as a stated decline reason in the same way a criminal record or a watchlist match is. The one class of finding the platform refuses as a stated reason is a cross-applicant network fraud signal, which is a correlation rather than a fact about the person.

The copy of the report is obtained from the consumer reporting agency, not from this platform. The pre-adverse-action step asks you to send the applicant a copy of the consumer report you relied on. The reviewer surface shows you what the file records so you can decide, and the compliance report you can export records your decision and the evidence you cited. Neither is the consumer report itself, and neither should be handed to the applicant as one. Request the copy, and the applicant’s dispute route, from the consumer reporting agency that produced it.

To read the itemized file yourself before you decide, open the credit history check on the verification in the console and use Reveal credit file. That view is access-logged. It is a console control: the embedded reviewer does not carry it, so the reminders there point at the agency and nothing else.

The federal lookback dimming is a criminal-record feature. The fcraReportableInUs flag and the dimmed rows described above are derived from the federal reporting limits on criminal records. Credit items are not dimmed by that rule, so read them on their own terms.

If the report never came back and you are deciding without it, that is a different situation from an adverse item: there is no consumer report contributing to the decision, and the reminders panel still opens because the check was on the verification. Record in your notes which of the two you are deciding on, because the notice obligations turn on it.

Document the decision

When you submit the decline, the reviewer-decision write captures:

• The reason code you selected from the dropdown.
• Every cited finding id and every cited rule id.
• Your free-form notes: use this field to record the individualized assessment you ran (job-relatedness, age of conviction, evidence of rehabilitation).
• Your reviewer identity and the wall-clock timestamp.

The write emits a kyc.session.reviewer_declined audit-log row through the HMAC-chained writer. The cited findings are linked from the row so a forensic walkthrough can reproduce the evidence you decided on.

Common questions

If a finding you expected to dim is not dimmed, the federal rule still considers it reportable, and you may need to apply a stricter state rule yourself. The platform does not suppress records by jurisdiction; apply state-specific rules during your review.

If a verification was declined and you are walking back to understand why, see the verification-declined FAQ. For terminology, see the Glossary.