Ralphs Grocery Sued Over Alleged Violations of California’s Fair Chance Act

The California Civil Rights Department (CRD) has filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against Ralphs Grocery Co., a Kroger banner, over alleged violations of California’s Fair Chance Act that resulted in the unlawful denial of employment opportunities to hundreds of applicants at store locations across Southern California. 

California’s Fair Chance Act went into effect in 2018 and was enacted to reduce barriers to employment and support community reintegration for people who have been previously involved in the criminal legal system. In passing the Fair Chance Act, the legislature recognized that “employment is essential to helping formerly incarcerated people support themselves and their families” and reduces the likelihood of an individual reoffending. The law generally prohibits employers with five or more employees from asking about a job applicant’s conviction history before making a conditional job offer, requires specific procedures for considering an applicant’s criminal history after a conditional job offer, and limits convictions that employers can consider disqualifying to those that have a direct relationship with job responsibilities. 

In its lawsuit filed before the Los Angeles County Superior Court, CRD alleged that Compton, Calif.-based Ralphs has ignored and continues to ignore the law’s requirements, including by screening out otherwise qualified applicants on the basis of criminal histories that don’t have any adverse relationship with the duties of the job for which they were applying. 

Information obtained by CRD in its investigation indicated that multiple candidates lost their job offers based on convictions for a single misdemeanor count of excessive noise. Other applicants who had convictions from other states for simple cannabis possession were also disqualified. According to CRD, these types of convictions, and hundreds more, have no impact on the duties associated with working at a grocery store and were not legitimate grounds for the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment.

CRD said that Ralphs also failed to perform individualized assessments of applicants’ criminal histories, provided inadequate notification about the grounds for withdrawing job offers, and unlawfully included questions in its job application form seeking the disclosure of an applicant’s criminal history, a direct violation of the Fair Chance Act. In addition, CRD claimed that more than 75% of job applicants who were told their job offers would be withdrawn weren’t provided any way to contact Ralphs to contest the decision, as legally required by the Fair Chance Act. Those who were provided a way to contact Ralphs were given only a phone number, without being told it was a fax line or who was on the other end.

“The Fair Chance Act is about giving every Californian an opportunity to thrive,” said CRD Director Kevin Kish. “When roughly 70 million Americans have some sort of record, policies like those employed by Ralphs aren’t just discriminatory and against California law, they don’t make sense. We can’t expect people to magically gain the economic and housing stability needed to reintegrate into their communities and stay out of the criminal legal system without a fair chance at steady employment, particularly when the job has nothing to do with a past offense.”

Kroger didn’t respond to Progressive Grocer’s request for comment at press time.

CRD is seeking monetary damages for the workers who were denied jobs or lost jobs as a result of Ralphs’ screening practices, and a court order to require Ralphs to comply with the Fair Chance Act.

Since the law went into effect in 2018, CRD has investigated hundreds of complaints alleging discrimination in employment decisions based on criminal history information, and has secured approximately 70 settlements. 

Ralphs operates more than 180 supermarkets across Southern California. Serving 11 million-plus customers daily through digital shopping and retail food stores under a variety of banner names, Cincinnati-based Kroger is No. 4 on The PG 100, Progressive Grocer’s 2023 list of the top food and consumables retailers in North America. PG also named Kroger one of its Retailers of the Century.