Los Angeles Fair Chance Ordinance: Coverage, Postings, and Assessments

Under the Los Angeles Fair Chance Ordinance, employer requirements boil down to a sequence: leave criminal history out of job ads, applications, and interviews; wait until a genuine conditional offer is on the table before running any background check; and, if a conviction surfaces that might cost the applicant the job, complete a written individualized assessment and a notice-and-response process before pulling the offer. The ordinance is codified at Los Angeles Municipal Code Section 189.00 and following, and it applies to private employers with ten or more employees doing business in the city.¹

Which Employers Are Covered

The ordinance reaches any private employer located in or doing business within the City of Los Angeles with at least ten employees. Owners, managers, and supervisors count toward that ten. Job placement and referral agencies are treated as employers too. Government entities, including the City of Los Angeles itself, are excluded.¹

An employee for FCIHO purposes is anyone who averages at least two hours of work per week inside Los Angeles city limits, measured over the four complete weeks before the position is advertised. Full-time, part-time, seasonal, and temporary workers all qualify. Someone telecommuting from a home inside the city counts; a remote worker outside city limits does not, even if the company is headquartered in LA. Classifying a worker as an independent contractor does not automatically take them out of the count — the city looks at the real working relationship.²

Employers in unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County are governed by a separate 2024 county ordinance, which is generally described as more rigorous and reaches beyond hiring into promotions, reassignments, discipline, and termination.³ If you operate at sites both inside the city and in unincorporated county areas, you need to track which rule applies at each location.

What Has To Appear in Job Ads and Workplace Postings

Every covered employer must include a statement in all job advertisements and solicitations saying that qualified applicants with criminal histories will be considered consistent with the ordinance. This language belongs in the posting itself, not buried in a later handbook.⁴

Employers also have to display a notice about the ordinance in a visible place at every workplace, job site, or other city location they control where applicants visit. Unionized workplaces have one extra step: a copy of that notice must go to every labor union or worker representative with a collective bargaining agreement covering employees in the city.⁴ The Bureau of Contract Administration publishes the required posting in English and Spanish.⁵

No Criminal History Questions Before a Conditional Offer

The central rule is simple to state and easy to violate by accident. No criminal history questions on applications. No criminal history questions in interviews. No checkboxes, no open-ended prompts, no informal probing. The prohibition reaches past the paperwork, too. Running an internet search on an applicant’s record, or sending a name to a third-party screening service before you’ve extended a conditional offer, is a violation just as surely as putting a box on the form.⁵

The conditional offer that unlocks the background check has to be real. It cannot be a placeholder the employer plans to withdraw as soon as the records come back. Only after a genuine offer is on the table can the employer order the check and begin weighing criminal history in the hiring decision.⁵

What You Cannot Consider Even After the Offer

A conditional offer does not open the whole record. Under California’s statewide Fair Chance Act, several categories of information are off-limits when weighing an applicant:

Arrests that did not lead to a conviction.
Participation in pretrial or post-trial diversion programs.
Convictions that have been sealed, dismissed, expunged, or otherwise set aside, along with convictions for which the person received a full pardon or a certificate of rehabilitation.

These exclusions sit in California Government Code Section 12952 and apply alongside the LA ordinance.⁶

The Written Individualized Assessment

If the background check turns up a conviction and you are considering withdrawing the offer, you cannot simply note the result and move on. You have to complete a written individualized assessment that connects the specific conviction to the specific job. Three factors drive it:

The nature and gravity of the offense, including the circumstances around it.
The time that has passed since the offense or since the sentence was completed. A ten-year-old conviction does not carry the weight of a recent one.
The nature of the job itself, meaning whether the conviction has a real connection to the duties. A fraud conviction may matter for a finance role and have no bearing on a warehouse position.

Both the LA ordinance and California Government Code Section 12952 require this analysis.⁶ One difference matters for employers in the city: the LA ordinance requires the assessment to be in writing, while the state law treats written documentation as optional. The stricter local rule controls, so Los Angeles employers must put it on paper.

Vague reasoning will not satisfy the requirement. A policy against hiring anyone with a felony, applied flat across the board, is not an individualized assessment. The written analysis has to draw a specific line between the applicant’s conviction and the responsibilities of the role.

The Fair Chance Process Before Rescinding an Offer

If the assessment points toward withdrawing the offer, a multi-step process runs before the decision becomes final.

Step one is a written preliminary notice to the applicant. That notice has to identify the specific conviction or convictions behind the concern, include a copy of the background check report, and include the written individualized assessment.⁶

Step two is the applicant’s response window. The applicant has at least five business days to submit evidence of rehabilitation or mitigating circumstances, such as treatment program completion, steady work history since the conviction, or community involvement. If instead the applicant is disputing the accuracy of the background report itself, the window is at least ten business days.⁷

Step three is the reassessment. If the applicant responds with new information, the employer has to redo the analysis in light of that evidence. The final decision then goes to the applicant in writing, with a copy of the reassessment included.⁵

Federal Background Check Rules Run in Parallel

If you use a third-party service to run the check, the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act adds its own layer on top of the city and state rules. Before ordering the report, you must give the applicant a standalone written disclosure explaining that a background check may be obtained and get the applicant’s written authorization. The disclosure has to stand alone, not be bundled with waivers or company policy acknowledgments.⁸

Before taking adverse action based on the report, you must provide the applicant with a copy of the report and a written summary of their FCRA rights. If the adverse action becomes final, a second notice has to follow, identifying the reporting agency and informing the applicant of the right to dispute the report’s accuracy and obtain a free copy within 60 days.⁸ These federal steps overlap with the Fair Chance process, so you are effectively satisfying both timelines at once.

Enforcement and Consequences for Violations

The Office of Wage Standards within the Bureau of Contract Administration enforces the FCIHO for private employers.⁹ An applicant or employee can file a written complaint within one year of the alleged violation, and the office can investigate and impose administrative fines where it finds one. The ordinance also provides a private right of action, allowing a civil suit after the administrative process has concluded or a hearing officer has issued a decision. A successful suit can produce the ordinance’s penalties plus any other legal or equitable relief the court finds appropriate.²

City contractors and subcontractors have more at stake than a standard fine. A violation can be treated as a material breach of the city contract, leading to termination, negative contractor evaluations, and a civil action brought by the City Attorney.² Separately, the state Fair Chance Act prohibits retaliation or interference with anyone exercising their rights under that statute.⁶

1
American Legal Publishing Corporation. Los Angeles Municipal Code 189.01 – Definitions
2
Bureau of Contract Administration. Rules and Procedures Implementing the Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance
3
Los Angeles County Department of Consumer and Business Affairs. Fair Chance Hiring
4
American Legal Publishing Corporation. Los Angeles Municipal Code 189.04 – Notice and Posting Requirements for Employers
5
Bureau of Contract Administration. Fair Chance Initiative for Hiring Ordinance
6
California Legislative Information. California Government Code 12952
7
California Civil Rights Department. Fair Chance Act Sample Forms
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681b – Permissible Purposes of Consumer Reports
9
Bureau of Contract Administration. Wage Standards