Washington recently enacted a statute regulating the use of credit checks by employers [link].  A client had a question about this so I clicked over to the statute (19.182.020) to take a quick look.  

So the statute regulates the use of "consumer reports" by employers - and restricts their use to where the information is "substantially related" to the person's position.  So far, so good.  I wondered - "what exactly is a consumer report?"  I thought "consumer report" would be defined as a typical credit report?  Here's the definition (19.182.010):

["consumer report"] means a written, oral, or other communication of information by a consumer reporting agency bearing on a consumer's creditworthiness, credit standing, credit capacity, character, general reputation, personal characteristics, or mode of living that is used or expected to be used or collected in whole or in part for:

     (i) The purpose of serving as a factor in establishing the consumer's eligibility for credit or insurance to be used primarily for personal, family, or household purposes; [or]

     (ii) Employment purposes

I could very well be missing something here but this looks like a significant drafting snafu.   The relevant question in my mind was whether a criminal background check falls under the definition of a "consumer report."   To the extent it's used by the employer, I guess the answer is yes??  I wonder if the drafters of the new section dealing with use of consumer reports by employers knew that the statute currently defined consumer report with reference to information used for employment purposes?  My guess is that they did not.