Legal Question in Employment Law in New York

Re: Employment Discrimination

Under N.Y. law it is ILLEGAL to reject an applicant for a job due to any arrests that did NOT result in a conviction (Section 296(16) of New York State's Executive Law); moreover, under New York state law it is also illegal for a company to have a general policy of rejecting all job applicants who have been convicted of crimes (Section 752 of New York state's Correction Law) and I provide more details about this law in the next three paragraphs.

(Note that the two laws I refer to above do NOT specifically refer to WHO is discriminating, and are therefore likely to be applicable to EMPLOYMENT AGENCIES AS WELL AS to EMPLOYERS.)

You can contact the New York State Division of Human Rights (NYSDHR) to file a complaint against each of these agencies that has rejected you for consideration for a job solely becuase of this misdemeanor. Note that under

Section 754 of New York state's Corrections Law, a job applicant with a criminal conviction has the legal RIGHT to DEMAND a WRITTEN explanation from a prospective EMPLOYER setting forth the reasons why he or she is not being hired and you should demand such written explanation from any agency that rejects you from job application.

Under New York state law, (Section 752 of the NYS Correctins law), any job applicant who has been convicted of crime(s) has the right to be individually considered for that job and the ultimate decision about that job applicant must be based on factors which include that applicant's qualifications for the job as well as the issue of past criminal convictions and other factors set forth by law.

It is ILLEGAL under New York law to reject a job applicant for past criminal convictions UNLESS EITHER those criminal convictions would result in "unreasonable risk" to property or people at the work location(Sec. 752(2) of NYS Correction Law) OR those criminal convictions are "DIRECTLY RELATED" to the job (which you say they are not). (Sec. 752(1) of NYS Correction Law).