October 18, 2024 – Tomorrow, October 19, 2024, the Pennsylvania Bureau of Professional and Occupational Affairs (BPOA) will publish the final regulations to implement Act 53 of 2020, commonly known as “the Occupational Licensing Reform Act.” The regulations will go into effect as of that date. Community Legal Services of Philadelphia (CLS) applauds these regulations, recognizing that they will open the doors to licensed professions for workers with criminal records.
Prior to Act 53, thousands of fully qualified Pennsylvania workers faced legal barriers to occupational licenses because of old and unrelated criminal records. As a result, these workers could not access family-sustaining careers for which they completed training. Act 53 reformed occupational licensing by getting rid of outdated criminal record restrictions for the professions and occupations which are regulated by boards and commissions within BPOA. Under the law, applicants can only be denied for convictions that are directly related to the practice of the profession or where the applicant’s criminal actions demonstrate a substantial risk to coworkers or customers.
The new regulations (Regulation #16A-66: Consideration of Criminal Convictions) implement the intent of Act 53 by limiting the list of offenses to which a presumption of unfitness attaches. BPOA removed hundreds of unrelated offenses from the originally proposed lists. For those offenses to which a presumption of unfitness does attach, their consideration is limited to a five-year period following conviction and may be rebutted during that period by evidence of fitness.
Rather than having a lifetime presumption of unfitness – no matter when in an applicant’s life an offense was committed – the occupational boards will consider each case on an individual basis, focusing on the nature of the conviction when determining fitness.
The new legal framework limits a board’s ability to disqualify applicants for most criminal convictions. Under the new regulations, more people with criminal records should be encouraged to access the licensed professions.
For instance, before Act 53, persons with drug convictions often were denied barbering licenses, despite having been trained while in prison to become barbers. These prospective barbers should have a much more routine path to approval under the new regulations.
The new narrowly drawn limitations are consistent with research showing that the recidivism risk of people with a prior criminal record falls below the risk of arrest for the general population approximately after four years without another conviction for drug offenders and three to four years for property offenders.
Sharon Dietrich, Litigation Director for CLS, said, “These regulations will allow people who do not present risk to move on to better jobs and provide better lives for their families. They will also help businesses fill job openings with fully qualified workers. We thank the Shapiro Administration and the boards and occupations for issuing these win-win regulations.”
With the publication of these regulations, the 29 boards and commissions will begin applying these principles to their consideration of applicants’ criminal records.
In 2023, Community Legal Services led a diverse coalition of stakeholders from across the state to protect occupational licensing reform from overbroad regulations that would undermine Act 53’s intended goals. BPOA subsequently released final regulations that will ensure that people can gain entry to the license professions.
According to the 2018 report of a task force on occupational licensing appointed by former Governor Wolf, around one million Pennsylvanians – about one in twelve state residents — are licensed by the 29 boards and commissions that comprise BPOA.
More than two dozen occupations are regulated by BPOA, from architects to veterinarians. CLS clients most affected by these restrictions work as barbers, cosmetologists, and nurses.