Background Checks for Veterinary Employees

Animal hospitals concentrate exactly what employment screening exists for.

There are scheduled drugs in the controlled-substance cabinet, cash and card payments at the front desk, and staff who work alone with animals and enter client homes on mobile and house-call visits.

Diversion is a live concern in this profession, not a hypothetical one: the Texas Board of Veterinary Medical Examiners wrote in 2016 that diversion of controlled substances is a large and growing problem that is becoming a larger problem in the veterinary community.

A criminal-record check is one layer of the answer, alongside the operational controls — who can open the drug log, who counts inventory, how a missing bottle gets reported.

If you are mapping which roles touch drugs, start from your state's controlled substance rules, then decide which roles justify a check.

Screening is also not the only screen.

Reference checks and drug testing are separate decisions with separate rules; this page stays on criminal-record checks and the sequence that keeps them legal, from the first disclosure to the final decision.

For where that step sits in the rest of the process, the veterinary hiring hub is the map.

If you order the check through a background-check vendor or consumer reporting agency, the Fair Credit Reporting Act governs the front end, and it starts before you order anything.

You must give the applicant or employee a clear and conspicuous written disclosure that a background report may be obtained for employment purposes, and the document must consist solely of that disclosure.

The authorization is its own step: the person must authorize the report in writing, and that authorization may sit on the same document as the disclosure.

Because the disclosure document has to consist solely of the disclosure, anything else on the page — your application, a liability release, a statement about how you use the results — breaks the standalone requirement.

Keep the disclosure on its own page with its own signature line.

The FCRA applies to employees as well as applicants.

If you re-check a technician who has worked for you for years — when they move into a role with controlled-substance access, for example — the disclosure and written authorization come first there too.

Finally, decide in writing which roles get checked, and run the same check for every candidate in a role.

A process that changes from candidate to candidate is harder to run consistently, and consistency is what makes the next steps work.

A report is not a verdict, and the FCRA builds in a pause before you act on one.

If you are considering an adverse action based in whole or in part on the report — declining an applicant, withdrawing an offer — you must first give the person a copy of the report and a written description of their rights under the FCRA, which is the summary of rights the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau publishes.

Only after that step do you make the final call, and if you do take the adverse action, the notice has required contents of its own.

It must state that the background-check company did not make the decision and cannot explain why it was made, and it must tell the person they can get a free copy of their report from the reporting agency within 60 days.

One number people expect here is missing from the statute text we read: we found no specific number of days between the pre-adverse notice and the final decision in the FCRA.

Screening checklists and vendors quote waiting windows, but the federal statute we checked sets none — build in enough time for the person to dispute a record before you finalize anything, and check whether your state or city sets its own clock.

Keep the pre-adverse notice, the report copy and the final notice as separate, filed documents.

If the candidate corrects the record at the pre-adverse stage, the decision you make on the corrected information is the one you can stand behind.

Before a conviction question goes anywhere near your application form, look at where the practice hires.

Fair-chance and ban-the-box laws can move the conviction question until after an offer, and two of them matter for a veterinary practice by name.

California.

The state's Fair Chance Act, in effect since January 1, 2018, generally bars employers with five or more employees from asking a job candidate about conviction history before making a job offer.

The law carries other requirements beyond that offer-first rule, so before you withdraw an offer in California, work from the California Civil Rights Department's fair-chance guidance or run the decision past employment counsel rather than improvising the sequence.

New York City.

The city's Fair Chance Act, in effect since October 27, 2015, requires most employers in the city to wait until after a conditional offer of employment before asking about or considering a candidate's criminal record, and the criminal-history protections apply to employers with four or more employees.

An employer that wants to withdraw the offer over criminal history must give the applicant at least five business days to respond.

Local Law 4 of 2021, effective July 29, 2021, extended those protections to current employees and to pending cases.

New York State adds its own layer: Correction Law Article 23-A (section 753) lists the factors an employer must weigh when considering a conviction, including the job's specific duties, the offense's bearing on fitness for those duties, and the time elapsed.

California has one more rule that surprises practices: under Government Code section 12954(b), employers may not ask job applicants about prior cannabis use, with limited exceptions for criminal-history information the fair-chance law and other laws allow.

And these are the two jurisdictions this page covers in detail, not the whole map — other states and cities have their own fair-chance laws we did not research for this page, so confirm what applies where you hire before you print the form.

Where a check is allowed, how you use the result is its own question, and the federal document to know is the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's enforcement guidance on arrest and conviction records, No. 915.002, issued April 25, 2012 and still posted on the EEOC's site.

Two points in it do most of the work.

An arrest is not conduct: the fact of an arrest does not establish that criminal conduct occurred, and excluding someone based on an arrest in itself is not job related and consistent with business necessity.

Read reports for dispositions, in other words — an arrest entry without a resulting conviction is not a conviction.

When you do weigh a conviction, the guidance assesses three factors, known as the Green factors: the nature and gravity of the offense or conduct, the time passed since the offense or sentence, and the nature of the job held or sought.

For a veterinary hospital that becomes role-specific reasoning: a conviction's relevance differs between a role that opens the controlled-substance log and one that never touches it.

The reason a small practice should care is disparate impact.

Under Title VII, a neutral criminal-record exclusion — the same blanket rule applied to every applicant — can be unlawful if it is not job related and consistent with business necessity.

A blanket no-felonies rule for front-desk roles is the shape of rule that standard puts at risk.

Know what the document is, too: the EEOC states in the guidance itself that it does not have the force and effect of law.

It is the agency's enforcement position, not a statute — treat it as the framework for making and documenting an individualized decision, and have counsel translate it into your written policy.

For a practice that keeps controlled substances on site, one federal rule does the real work.

Under 21 CFR 1301.76(a), a DEA-registered practitioner may not employ, in a role with access to controlled substances, anyone convicted of a felony relating to controlled substances, or anyone whose DEA application was denied, whose registration was revoked, or who surrendered a registration for cause.

That rule reaches your hired staff because they work under the practice's registration: DEA regulations exempt an agent or employee of a registrant acting in the usual course of business or employment from needing their own registration.

Anyone with access to the drug stock — the technicians and assistants who draw from it, not only the veterinarians — is inside this rule.

DEA also publishes employee-screening questions, but know what they are before you copy them onto your form.

The screening section at 21 CFR 1301.90 is written for non-practitioner registrants such as manufacturers and distributors, not veterinary practices; a practice may borrow its questions, but it is not a screening mandate for you.

The model questions ask whether, in the past five years, the applicant was convicted of a felony, or in the past two years of any misdemeanor, or is presently formally charged with committing a criminal offense, and whether, in the past three years, the applicant knowingly used narcotics, amphetamines or barbiturates other than as prescribed.

Timing and subject matter still answer to state law where you hire.

In California (employers with five or more employees) and New York City (four or more employees), conviction questions generally wait until after an offer, and California's bar on asking applicants about prior cannabis use is its own layer to check before you borrow any drug-history question.

For the checking itself, DEA's recommendations for covered registrants point to local courts and law enforcement records, and to a check of DEA files through a DEA Field Division Office with the individual's written consent.

In Texas and California, fingerprint checks are built in at licensure and permitting, so part of the screening happens without any action by you.

Texas has required all veterinary license applicants, DVM and LVT, to submit fingerprints before licensure since October 1, 2018.

In California, an assistant may obtain or administer a controlled substance only if a licensed veterinarian designates them and they hold a valid Veterinary Assistant Controlled Substance Permit.

The permit section took effect January 1, 2026, and permit applicants submit fingerprints for a state and federal criminal history check through the California Department of Justice.

If you hire in either state, part of the screening runs through the state before day one.