Tag: Nebraska

First fair chance licensing reforms of 2024

Expanding employment opportunities in licensed occupations has been a priority for criminal record reformers in the past half dozen years. Happily, fair chance licensing reforms also appear less politically controversial than some others, with Midwestern states like Iowa and Indiana among the most progressive in the Nation in their treatment of justice-impacted license applicants and licensees. In the first three months of 2024, two more Midwestern states (South Dakota and Nebraska) enacted comprehensive changes to their licensing laws, while a third state (Pennsylvania) was poised to close a major loophole in its licensing scheme. These reforms continue a nationwide trend that since 2017 has seen 43 states and the District of Columbia enact 79 separate laws* to limit state power to deny opportunity to qualified individuals based on their criminal history. Significant legislation is under serious consideration in half a dozen additional states, so we expect this year to produce another bumper crop of fair chance licensing laws. The new laws are described briefly below, and additional details can be found in the relevant state profile from the Restoration of Rights Project.

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Bumper crop of new expungement laws expected in 2019

Earlier this year we reported that, in 2018, legislatures enacted an unprecedented number of new laws aimed at restoring rights and opportunities for people with a criminal record.  (Last year 32 states, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands enacted 61 new laws to facilitate reentry and reintegration.)  The first quarter of 2019 has already produced a baker’s dozen of new restoration laws, some quite significant, indicating that this year is likely to be every bit as productive as last.  The 13 new laws enhance access to record-clearing relief, occupational licensing and employment, and executive clemency.  Also notable, if only for the sheer number of people who will benefit when the law goes into effect on July 1, is the Virginia legislature’s accession to Governor Ralph Northam’s request that it “eliminate[] the unfair practice of revoking a person’s driver’s license for failure to pay court fines and fees,” which will immediately reinstate driving privileges to more than 627,000 Virginians. This year to date, state lawmakers have focused most of their attention on improving access to record-clearing: 8 of the 13 new laws expand eligibility for expungement and sealing and streamline applicable procedures.  The two most significant new laws were enacted in Western states.  Utah’s HB 431—signed by […]

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Collateral Consequences in Occupational Licensing Act

We’ve noted in recent posts the numerous states that, just in the past three or four months, have enacted broad occupational licensing reforms affecting people with a criminal record.  Many of these new laws have been influenced by a model developed by the Institute for Justice (IJ), a libertarian public interest law firm that has been litigating and lobbying to reduce barriers to work for more than two decades.  In turn, states like Indiana, Kansas, Tennessee and Wisconsin have built upon IJ’s model to enact even more progressive schemes intended to ensure that people with the requisite professional qualifications will not be unfairly excluded based on a record of arrest or conviction. Now IJ has incorporated many of these progressive refinements into its original model licensing law, the Occupational Licensing Review Act (OLRA), and broken out the provisions relating to criminal records into a free-standing model act specifically directed at managing collateral consequences in the occupational licensing context, the new Collateral Consequences in Occupational Licensing Act (CCOLA).

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Wisconsin joins crowd of states regulating occupational licensure

On April 16, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed into law Act 278, making his state the sixth in the past two months to establish new rules on consideration of criminal record in the context of occupational and professional licensure.  Effective August 1, 2018, licensing boards in Wisconsin will be prohibited in most cases from denying or revoking a license based on arrests or pending charges, and required to justify in writing any adverse action based on conviction.  Boards will also be required to give applicants a preliminary determination as to whether a particular conviction will be disqualifying. Indiana, Arizona, Massachusetts, Nebraska and Tennessee have all recently enacted laws regulating how licensing boards treat arrests and convictions, in some cases with strikingly similar features, as described in recent posts here and here.  The conviction-related provisions of the model occupational licensing law proposed by the Institute for Justice are reflected in almost all of these new laws, though many of them go even farther to discourage unwarranted discrimination affecting as much as 25% of the U.S. workforce.      

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Two more states regulate consideration of conviction in occupational licensing

Tennessee and Nebraska are the two most recent states to enact laws regulating how a criminal record will be considered in occupational licensing.  Nebraska’s Occupational Board Reform Act (LB 299) was approved by Governor Pete Ricketts on Appril 23, and Tennessee’s Fresh Start Act (SB 2465) was signed into law by Governor Bill Haslam on the same day. The Nebraska law (which does not take effect until July 2019) is a general deregulation of licensing that includes a provision whereby individuals with a criminal record may obtain a preliminary determination of their eligibility from the relevant licensing board, even before they have obtained the necessary training and qualification.  The board must issue a written determination within 90 days giving its “findings of fact and conclusions of law,” and the fee for this determination may not exceed $100.  The individual may include with the preliminary application “additional information about the individual’s current circumstances, including the time since the offense, completion of the criminal sentence, other evidence of rehabilitation, testimonials, employment history, and employment aspirations.”  The board’s decision may be appealed under the state’s administrative procedure act. Tennessee’s new law (which is effective July 1, 2018) provides for a preliminary determination of eligibility by […]

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