Although overreach by EPA has been discussed here and elsewhere on any number of occasions, they're far from alone. As James Bovard, writing in the Wall Street Journal, notes: the EEOC has recently decided that refusal to hire criminals should be a federal crime, and their new "guidance" rulings threaten to haul employers into court for taking criminal records into account during the hiring process.
U.S. District Judge Jose Alejandro Gonzalez Jr., in ruling against the agency, said: "EEOC's position that minorities should be held to lower standards is an insult to millions of honest Hispanics. Obviously a rule refusing honest employment to convicted applicants is going to have a disparate impact upon thieves."
Despite that ruling, EEOC maintains that "criminal record exclusions have a disparate impact based on race and national origin." The bureaucrats arrived at this conclusion after noting that blacks, who presently comprise 13% of the population, are 7 times more frequently convicted for violent crimes than are whites (and 3 times more frequently than Latinos).
Under terms of the EEOC "guidance", operators of a day care center could be sued by the feds for refusing to hire a convicted pedophile, and security companies could be sued for failing to hire a convicted thief. Of course, the rule would not be applied to people with white skin who happen to be convicted criminals, as they aren't members of a "protected class", according to EEOC.
