One had battery, the other grand theft - both expunged, both shown the door
Two job applicants had their misdemeanor convictions wiped clean under California law. The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) hired neither of them anyway.
A California appeals court ruled on September 22 that LAUSD got it wrong. The district violated the state's Nondisclosure Statute - Labor Code section 432.7 - when it rejected both applicants based on expunged convictions that no law required it to consider.
One applicant had sought a part-time role in an after-school program. The other applied to be a legal secretary in the district's own general counsel office. Their convictions - misdemeanor battery for one, misdemeanor grand theft for the other - had both been expunged under Penal Code section 1203.4. The district turned them both down, taking the position that expungement changed nothing. Its argument: it needed to protect children by screening out virtually anyone with a criminal record.
That argument did not survive appeal.
The Nondisclosure Statute broadly bars employers from asking about or acting on expunged convictions. The district leaned on two exceptions. The first lets employers inquire about "particular convictions" where a specific law requires that information or prohibits hiring someone with that conviction. The court found no law singling out misdemeanor battery or grand theft as bars to school district employment. The Education Code sections the district pointed to covered violent felonies, serious felonies, sex offenses, and controlled substance offenses. Not these.
The second exception lets employers who are legally required to run background checks comply with that obligation. But the court drew a clear boundary: running the check is one thing - acting on everything it turns up is another. Employers can use background check results only to the extent a separate law requires them to restrict employment based on those specific offenses. No such law applied here.
Legislative history backed that reading. When lawmakers reshaped these exceptions through Senate Bill 1412 in 2018, they did so because employers were being "overzealous in their screening" and "wrongly believed" the earlier version of the statute let them reject applicants over "unrelated, expunged" convictions. The tighter language was no accident.
The practical upshot for any California employer running background checks: a legal obligation to screen does not translate into a legal right to act on every result. If an expunged conviction is not specifically identified in law as an employment bar, it stays off the table.
The court affirmed both summary judgments against the district and awarded costs to the applicants. The decision is certified for publication, carrying precedential weight across California.
