Does Walgreens hire people with felonies?

What Walgreens has said

Walgreens is a member of the Second Chance Business Coalition and was named among the companies that had joined when the coalition launched in April 2021 (then as Walgreens Boots Alliance). Its careers site links to the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance notice, which covers how employers there may consider criminal history. Walgreens has not published its own background check or drug testing process on the pages we could open.

• Second Chance Business Coalition member

  Listed as a member of the Second Chance Business Coalition.¹

• Founding member of the Second Chance Business Coalition

  Walgreens Boots Alliance was named in the coalition's April 26, 2021 launch release as one of the companies that had already joined.²

• Fair-chance notice

  The Walgreens careers home page links to the official Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance notice. This is a legal notice for LA County hiring, not a company-wide policy.³

Does Walgreens do background checks?

Walgreens hasn't said publicly whether it runs background checks. We did not find a Walgreens page that describes its background check process. The careers site links to the LA County Fair Chance Ordinance notice, which applies to criminal history checks for jobs in that county.³

• How long a background check takes

Does Walgreens drug test?

Walgreens hasn't published a drug testing policy. Some job postings say whether a test is required, so check the listing for the role you want.

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.^6,7,8
• 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."^6,7
• You have the right to dispute inaccurate or incomplete information in your background report directly with the company that made it.^6,9
• 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.^10,11
• 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).^10,12

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.^6,9,13
• 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.¹⁴
• 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.^15,16

See whether you can clear your record in your state