Employers Face Backlash Over Facebook Password Demands

by Jared Solovay
Director of Employer Relations

You sit down for a job interview and the interviewer asks for your Facebook password. It sounds positively Orwellian. Yet according to numerous news accounts, this is not only really happening, it’s happening a lot. In a weak job market, employers have greater bargaining strength, and some of them are using it to pry into your personal life. Claiming the need to screen out drug users, gang members and other unwanted employees, these interviewers insist on perusing through photographs, status updates and private messages. But is it legal?

Demanding to read a job applicant’s private electronic communications could implicate her status as a member of a protected class. For example, private messages might reveal the applicant’s involvement in a particular religion, thereby subjecting the employer to possible liability for violating anti-discrimination laws. Regardless, if it wasn’t illegal before, it soon will be in many states (and possibly throughout the country). In response to a growing outcry, the California State Assembly voted unanimously to ban the practice. Similar legislation is now pending in Washington DC.

In truth, lawyers tend to be more scrupulous than the average employers when it comes to adhering to the law in hiring practices, and we in Law Career Services haven’t heard of any legal employers demanding Facebook passwords in interviews. If you have, I invite you to email us and share the details. In the meantime, keep following this evolving and provocative story as it makes its way through various legislative bodies and the court of public opinion.

[ Note: Click here to read a previous discussion on this trend. ]