Background Check Reform is a "Smart-on-Jobs" Policy
With over 600,000 job vacancies in Texas and an unemployment rate hovering around just 4% as of June 20251, Texas employers are hungry for talent. Yet outdated and inaccurate background checks are quietly sidelining qualified job applicants, creating unnecessary barriers to employment, housing, education, and economic stability.
More than 9 million Texans have a criminal record, including many who were arrested but never convicted2. Today, background checks still often list arrests that resulted in no conviction. Employers, landlords, and even schools see these records and disqualify applicants; not because of who they are, but because of a flawed report.
Texas needs to remove non-convictions from criminal background checks. During the 89th legislative session, a trio of bipartisan bills — Senate Bills 694, 695, and 696 — would have offered a commonsense fix to ensure fairness, accuracy, and transparency in criminal history reporting. They would have required the Department of Public Safety to publish information about the sale of criminal history information, ensured that a consumer who successfully disputes an incorrect record receives a corrected report, and prevented consumer reporting agencies (CRAs) from reporting criminal history information that did not lead to a conviction or deferred adjudication.
Unfortunately, the legislature did not pass these bills, but we are working tirelessly in the interim to garner support for similar criminal background check reform legislation next session.
Under current law, someone who was wrongfully arrested and never convicted of a crime may still have a criminal record on their CRA report, which could lead a potential employer or landlord to reject their job or housing application.
Additionally, employers also lose when they receive stale and inaccurate data. Out-of-date background checks can lead employers to hire someone who no longer meets eligibility standards for regulated positions. In industries like logistics, manufacturing, and energy (where safety, security, and compliance matter), a lagging background check system creates both a liability and a regulatory risk.
Elected officials in Texas want residents to work. The state continues to break job records, countering the national trend of a shrinking economy. Texas has added 232,500 jobs over the last 12 months, outpacing the national annual job growth rate by 0.6 percentage points.3 Yet how can Texans fill these jobs when employers disqualify them based on old and inaccurate charges? It's counterintuitive to build new job opportunities and then prevent residents from joining the workforce.
We’re not alone in wanting to remove barriers to reentry: seven in ten Texans say that denying people opportunities for housing, education, and employment hinders their reintegration efforts4.
Without legislative reform, background checks will continue to display incorrect and irrelevant information that keeps Texans from participating in our growing economy. The legislature needs to limit the records reported by CRAs to only those involving convictions. This would not let people off the hook. Instead, it would ensure people are not penalized for something they never did in the first place.
Recognizing this, states from Kentucky5 to New York6 have already banned non-convictions from CRA reporting. This reform brings integrity to a system that touches nearly every job seeker in Texas. Texas cannot afford to underutilize the talent already here, and there are many jobs that need to be filled. These are not soft-on-crime policies; rather, they are smart-on-jobs legislation.
We believe in accountability, but we must also prioritize opportunity and accuracy. Employers want to hire, and Texans want to work. Our legislators need to help make that possible next session.
Let’s get this done, together.
– Daniel Tyrone is a Human Resources and Legal Executive and Employment and Labor Attorney with over 15 years of experience in the field and Natasha Malik, J.D., is a Senior Staff Attorney at Texas Appleseed on the Criminal Justice Project team.
1 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. "Local Area Unemployment Statistics, Texas – June 2025." https://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm
2 Texas Department of Public Safety (2022). Data request on criminal history records not expunged or sealed.
3 https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/texas-sets-new-records-for-total-jobs-texans-working/
4 Change Research & WPAi (November 2022). Texans’ support for change. Clean Slate Texas. https://www.cleanslatetexas.org/texans-support-for-change
5 Kentucky Revised Statutes § 367.310 (2025), https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/law/statutes/statute.aspx?id=3493
6 New York Consolidated Laws, General Business Law § 380-J (2024), https://law.justia.com/codes/new-york/gbs/article-25/380-j/