Rules Committee backs amendments to align San Francisco's Fair Chance ordinance with state law, adds six-month report

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors' Rules Committee on March 14 voted to forward amendments to the city's Fair Chance Ordinance intended to harmonize local requirements with the state's recent AB 1008.

Britney Chiquata, legislative aide to Supervisor Malia Cohen, said the changes would "prohibit employers and housing providers from inquiring about a person's conviction history until after the conditional offer of employment or housing," bringing the local code into alignment with the state statute. The sponsor also asked the committee to consider pushing the ordinance's operative date from July 1 to October 1, with subsequent discussion of a possible further delay to Jan. 1 to allow more outreach.

Ellen Love of the Office of Labor Standards Enforcement (OLSE) described the city's enforcement record since the ordinance took effect in August 2014. She said the office has opened about 64 investigations, completed 56 and had eight open investigations at the time of her remarks; she added her office had found violations in 35 of those inquiries (about 55 percent). Love said most matters resolved informally, the ordinance's penalty provisions are limited (one case produced the $50 fine allowed under the code), and OLSE had collected about $30,000 in back pay in a few egregious cases.

When pressed during questioning, OLSE later reported it had received "66 complaints" since 2014 and said it followed up on all of them, noting that some complainants later withdrew their matters. The office also said only one case resulted in a formal determination and that many other matters were resolved through negotiated settlements. (The committee record contains both the 64 and 66 figures as part of the public exchange; the office provided the varying totals in its remarks.)

Speakers at public comment included Jim Lazar of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, who urged a 5-employee threshold so local employers can bring complaints to the city and warned that unbundling application errors could create hundreds of violations from a single defective posting. Phil Hernandez of the National Employment Law Project and other advocates said the amendments would help harmonize city rules with state law and strengthen enforcement tools. The Human Rights Commission's Zoe Polk noted the HRC had received roughly five to 10 housing complaints under the ordinance and offers free training for affordable housing providers.

To increase oversight of the ordinance's implementation, Supervisor Katherine Stephanie proposed and the committee accepted an amendment requiring the Office of Labor Standards Enforcement to submit a report on implementation and enforcement six months after the ordinance's operative date (and annually thereafter). The committee then voted to forward the item to the full Board with a positive recommendation; the operative date remained set in the draft as Oct. 1 pending further action at the full Board.

The committee's action sends the amended ordinance to the full Board of Supervisors, where members will consider the operative date and the final package of changes.