Legal Question in Business Law in Minnesota

Re: job applicants

Depends on 2 things:

What you mean by "others" ( any employee of company would be permitted)

WHat you agreed to when you made application (there may be a release in the app- they may contact prior employers to verify info etc.)

Re: job applicants

A very interesting and timely question.

Your question contains, in fact, several questions, and does not supply sufficient information for a complete answer.

The first question is who received the information, and to whom it was disclosed. Information can obviously be shared by and between employees of the company to which an application was submitted -- if they are involved in handling or reviewing applications, or are involved in making employment decisions. It is more problematic if information is shared with line employees, that is, among employees who do not have any responsibility for reviewing or making employment decisions. The general rule, and this is very general, is that the information on an application enjoys some sort of qualified privilege, although there is nothing in the law that creates some sort of clear, bright line rule on this issue. The question of under what circumstances information can be disclosed to others also depends on the second issue, on what kind of information the application contains and how it may relate to the employee's job functions.

Some employers now investigate an applicant's criminal background and credit history as part of the employment application. This raises a host of relatively new, and to some extent untested, privacy issues. In a very general way, privileged information not relevant to the employee's job function should be kept in confidence, although how one defines both the privilege and job function is open to debate. Information that is in some way pertinent to the job function (skill set, employment history, educational background, interests that relate to the job) are likely not protected. Credit history, by contrast, may be utterly irrelevant to the job function, and disclosing of this information may be a violation of law.

Finally, the questions you raise may be the subject of a release or authorization that was signed as part of the employment application.

If you have further questions, please feel free to contact me. My contact information is set forth below.