Long v. SEPTA: Which Background-Check Violations Get You Into Federal Court

The setup

SEPTA rejected job applicants with old drug convictions after pulling criminal-history reports — without first giving them copies of the reports or the FCRA summary of rights, as § 1681b(b)(3)(A) requires before adverse action.

The holding

Long v. Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, 903 F.3d 312 (3d Cir. 2018). Post-Spokeo, the court split the two claims. Failure to provide a copy of the consumer report before adverse action (§ 1681b(b)(3)(A)(i)) is a concrete informational injury:

"Plaintiffs have standing to assert their first claim—that SEPTA failed to provide copies of their consumer reports."

But the failure to provide the summary-of-rights notice (§ 1681b(b)(3)(A)(ii)) was, on those facts, not concrete — the plaintiffs had learned their rights in time to sue anyway:

"Under the principles outlined above, this is a 'bare procedural violation, divorced from any concrete harm,' that cannot 'satisfy the injury-in-fact requirement of Article III.'"

Why it matters

If an employer rejected you over a background check you never got to see, Long says the courthouse door is open — you were denied the very thing that would have let you catch and correct errors before losing the job. For the mechanics of disputing the underlying report, see Checkr background check errors and how far back a background check goes in NJ and MD. We represent NJ and NYC workers in exactly these cases — start at our background-check attorney page for a free case review.