Asurint Includes Expunged Criminal Records in Background Checks, Class Action Says

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A proposed class action claims One Source Technology, which does business as Asurint, has violated federal law by negligently including expunged Florida juvenile records in consumers’ background checks.

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Specifically, the 15-page lawsuit alleges Asurint has run afoul of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), a federal law which requires consumer reporting agencies to maintain reasonable procedures to ensure the “maximum possible accuracy” of the consumer information they share with third parties.

According to the case, the defendant, an Ohio-based company that provides background screening services for employers, has demonstrated a failure to implement these statutorily required procedures by reporting “disparaging and misleadingly incomplete” conviction information that has been erased pursuant to Florida’s Dropout Prevention Act.

As part of the state statute, minors classified as “serious or habitual delinquent offenders,” or who were committed to a juvenile correctional facility, automatically have their criminal histories expunged when they turn 26 years old, the complaint says. The suit notes that all other juveniles have their record automatically destroyed when they reach age 21.

The plaintiff, a Georgia resident whose Florida juvenile records were sealed when he turned 26 in October 2017, claims he was denied employment at Inergroup Insourcing Solutions in November 2023 when the company obtained a background check from Asurint that wrongfully listed his old convictions. 

What’s more, none of the offenses included in Asurint’s report provided any indication that the plaintiff was a youthful offender, or that the records had been expunged, the case contends.

The complaint stresses that the defendant’s unlawful failure to ensure the maximum accuracy of its background reports has impeded the plaintiff’s and other proposed class members’ ability to secure employment in direct contradiction to Florida’s Dropout Prevention Act, which was designed to allow individuals to pursue such opportunities “absent concern of being left debilitated due to the past indiscretions of their youth.”

The plaintiff also claims that Asurint’s erroneous reporting and Inergroup’s subsequent denial of employment have caused him to suffer “emotional distress along with embarrassment, frustration, and annoyance.”

The lawsuit looks to represent anyone in the United States on whom, within the past two years, Asurint compiled and shared a consumer background report containing criminal conviction information that had been expunged by operation of Florida law.

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