Massachusetts' Department of Early Education and Care (EEC) is one of the state agencies that have access to juvenile records, including sealed juvenile records, for background checks for all employees of agencies licensed by EEC. These agencies include child care agencies, private child care providers, and (non-child care) agencies that provide foster, adoption and residential care services.
In 2018, the Baker administration significantly changed EEC's background check policy (through regulations and legislation) expanding the power of EEC to ban both prospective and current employees from serving children in their respective agency or non-profit provider. While citing new federal child care block grant requirements, the Baker administration went beyond those requirements both in scope of the checks and by imposing the same restrictions on non-child care EEC-licensed programs.
The new EEC policy has already had a significant and discriminatory impact by creating more restrictive guidelines barring individuals from being approved to join an agency, and in many cases, has required agencies to remove staff - who have been employed for years and decades - from direct service positions or risk the loss of their agency's license to operate. With the new changes, employers are now also excluded from the background check process and have no role in the waiver process.
Lawyers for Civil Rights (formerly Lawyer's Committee for Civil Rights) filed a class action lawsuit challenging
EEC's use of juvenile records
to bar employees and its racially discriminatory impact perpetuating the racial and ethnic disparities of the juvenile justice system into adulthood. The lawsuit (
Gregory v. Commonwealth
)
was filed on behalf of a child care agency employee who was banned from her job of over 20 years over a 33-year old juvenile record.
