Originally Posted by
Sobchak
I'm interested in the expungement issue. Utah law says:
If an agency does not receive the expungement order, they are not required to seal their records. A government agency that has received an expungement order will respond to an inquiry as though that arrest or conviction did not occur. A person who has had records expunged may respond to an inquiry as though that arrest or conviction did not occur. The order to seal records applies only to government agencies. Other records, such as news accounts of an arrest or conviction, are not affected.
After a record is expunged, an agency's sealed records can still be viewed and copied by some government officials, and the court can order the records unsealed under some conditions.
My question is how are airlines able to get records that should be viewed only by government agencies? Can you respond as if the event never happened?
When is an expungement not an expungement?
Sorry for the thread drift, folks.
The fallacy here is that this UT law, which is STATE law. FEDERAL law ALWAYS prevails over state law.
The potential problem is that arrests and convictions which get reported to the FBI database and are subsequently expunged at the state level don't get expunged by the FBI.
1) They are feds, and states can't tell them what to do.
2) Their database is used for national security and intelligence purposes so they don't ever want to erase any information. Since they don't have to, better assume that they don't.
Now not every Tom, Dick, and Harry can access the FBI database, but airlines are special. They actually do have access since they have to ensure they are not hiring people with TSA disqualifying backgrounds.
So worst case what happens is the airline gets to look at the Db, and they see something you did not report...their assumption is that you lied so they don't hire you.
It's possible some airlines might try to comply with state law and "pretend" they didn't see something in the FBI database but this is such a special situation that there's probably nobody interested in enforcing it. No prosecutor wants to make headlines because he's trying to force airlines to hire ex-cons. It's just a weird situation, and unless you work in an airline's HR it's hard to say exactly how they would deal with this.