Does Family Dollar hire people with felonies?

What Family Dollar has said

Family Dollar has been an independent company since July 2025, when Dollar Tree completed its sale to Brigade Capital Management and Macellum Capital Management. We found no Family Dollar statement on hiring people with criminal records, and it is not a Second Chance Business Coalition member. In 2017, New York City's human rights commission charged Family Dollar with asking about criminal history on online job applications before an offer, which city law bars; we found no published outcome. Some of its distribution-center warehouse postings, in Rome, New York and Maquoketa, Iowa, say it conducts pre-employment drug testing and criminal background checks; the store postings we read don't mention screening. Its privacy policy says it may receive results of pre-employment checks or screenings from third parties.

• Ownership change

  Dollar Tree announced on July 7, 2025 that it had completed the sale of its Family Dollar business to Brigade Capital Management, LP and Macellum Capital Management, LLC. Family Dollar's own history page says it is once again an independent company.¹

• City enforcement

  On November 16, 2017, while Family Dollar was owned by Dollar Tree, the New York City Commission on Human Rights announced Fair Chance Act charges against 12 businesses, Family Dollar among them. The commission said its testers had found questions about applicants' criminal history on online job applications, which the city's law bars before a conditional offer. These were charges, not findings; we found no published outcome.²

Does Family Dollar do background checks?

Family Dollar runs background checks for some roles. Five distribution-center warehouse postings we opened (three in Rome, New York and two in Maquoketa, Iowa) say Family Dollar conducts pre-employment drug testing and criminal background checks. Other warehouse postings (Front Royal, Virginia; Ashley, Indiana; Marianna, Florida; Duncan, Oklahoma; Morehead, Kentucky) and the store postings we read don't mention a check. Family Dollar's privacy policy (effective July 1, 2025) says it may receive results of pre-employment checks or screenings from third parties in connection with an application; it doesn't name a screening company or say which jobs are checked or when.^3,4,5

• Criminal history
• Drug screen

• How long a background check takes

Does Family Dollar drug test?

Family Dollar drug tests for some roles. The same five warehouse postings (Rome, New York and Maquoketa, Iowa) say Family Dollar conducts pre-employment drug testing. Other warehouse postings and the store postings we read don't mention a drug test, and Family Dollar hasn't published a testing policy for other jobs.^3,4

Rules for specific jobs

• Store managers and assistant managers at stores that sell alcohol or tobacco

  Family Dollar manager postings say a local government may require a manager to provide detailed background information to get a license to sell alcohol or tobacco, and that not qualifying for the license can lead to demotion or separation. We saw this on store manager, store manager trainee and assistant manager postings in New York and New Jersey.⁶

• Store customer service associates

  The customer service associate postings we read (Texarkana, Texas; Natchitoches, Louisiana; Fresno and Yucaipa, California; Long Island, New York) don't mention a background check, a drug test or criminal records.⁷

Your rights, and how far back a check can go

• Under the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), an employer must get your written permission before it gets a background report about you from a background screening company.^17,18,19
• Before an employer decides not to hire, keep, or promote you because of something in a background report, it must give you a copy of the report and a document called "A Summary of Your Rights Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act."^17,18
• You have the right to dispute inaccurate or incomplete information in your background report directly with the company that made it.^17,20
• The FCRA's seven-year limit does not apply to criminal convictions, so under federal law a conviction can show up on a background report no matter how old it is.^21,22
• Under the FCRA, background and credit reports generally cannot include arrest records, civil lawsuits, or civil judgments that are more than seven years old (or older than the statute of limitations, if that is longer).^21,23

Your full background check rights

Before you apply

• You can ask a background screening company for the information it has on you, and the CFPB keeps a list of consumer reporting companies, including employment screening companies, with their contact details.^17,20,24
• According to the Clean Slate Initiative, 14 states and Washington, D.C. have passed Clean Slate laws that meet its criteria for automatically clearing eligible records: Pennsylvania, Utah, New Jersey, Connecticut, Michigan, Delaware, Virginia, California, Oklahoma, Colorado, Minnesota, New York, Illinois, and Missouri, plus D.C.²⁵
• The Federal Bonding Program, run by the U.S. Department of Labor, lets states give employers free fidelity bonds that protect them against losses from a newly hired worker's dishonest acts, for job seekers with past justice involvement or in recovery from substance use.^26,27

See whether you can clear your record in your state