Just in time for the holidays, Maryland residents may be left without Uber and Lyft. By December 22, state regulators will decide if all for-hire drivers must have fingerprint background checks to work. If fingerprinting is mandated, the companies could cease operations in the state — just as they did in Austin, Texas earlier this year.
This is a classic case of policymakers putting tens of thousands of jobs at risk because they watch too much CSI on television. Fingerprint background checks sound secure, but they are unnecessary, ineffective, and discriminatory when misused as a job screening tool.
In 2015, the Maryland General Assembly instructed the states’ Public Service Commission to evaluate the effectiveness of the name-based background checks that ridesharing companies voluntarily use. Over a three-day hearing last month, Uber and Lyft laid out the reasons why their checks are just as effective as government fingerprinting. If the commission accepts these arguments, the law’s fingerprinting requirement will be waived.