Fair Hiring in Banking Act

Floor Speech

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Mrs. BEATTY. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Illinois for yielding time, and I also thank him and the minority for their support of this bill.

Madam Speaker, with the historic recovery since President Biden took office, there are now 11.5 million job openings in the United States. Unfortunately, for 78 million justice-involved individuals--that is one out of every three American adults--those opportunities are too often out of reach.

Under current law, people with criminal records are prohibited from working in a federally insured financial institution like a bank or a credit union unless they get a waiver from the government. That is just not for major felonies but also for minor misdemeanors, like shoplifting or having an altercation.

That is why my bill, H.R. 5911, the Fair Hiring in Banking Act, would update the law to reduce barriers for individuals with criminal records seeking to work at a federally insured financial institution.

Take the example of a young person that had an altercation with a police officer, a misdemeanor, and got 6 months probation with no time served and without admitting guilt. They would fall under this.

Specifically, this bill would reduce the existing lifetime ban to a more effective 7-year ban. Research shows that after 7 years, someone convicted of a felony is no more likely to commit a new offense than any other person.

Importantly, my bill would keep in place the ban for people who are convicted of major financial offenses like bank fraud or money laundering.

The bill also, as you have heard, codifies some of the recent rulemaking of the FDIC to exempt those individuals whose crimes have been expunged or whose offenses happened before the age of 21.

I would like to point out to my colleagues that this is a bipartisan bill that passed the Financial Services Committee without controversy. It has the backing of major financial services industry groups and a broad range of organizations, from the United States Chamber of Commerce to Public Citizen.

I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

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