Employer denied job because of HireRight

Question

I passed every round of interviews and received a written offer. Two weeks in, HR called to say the company was rescinding the offer based on my HireRight background check. No one would tell me what, exactly, was flagged, just that the "results did not meet their hiring standards."

I pulled the HireRight report myself and found a charge listed under my name from a county I have never lived in, for an incident that occurred when I was supposedly in two places at once. The dates, the jurisdiction, and the description do not match anything in my actual history. HireRight appears to have pulled a record from a person with a similar name and dropped it into my file without verifying a single identifying detail beyond a partial name match.

I filed a dispute through the HireRight portal, but the response was a form letter saying the information had been "verified" with the reporting county. The employer has moved on. My start date has passed. I turned down another offer for this position. Can an employer legally deny a job because of HireRight reporting someone else’s record, and do I have any recourse?

Consumer Attorneys · Accepted Answer

What you are describing is a textbook FCRA violation. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, background check companies like HireRight are legally required to follow “reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy” before reporting criminal records tied to your name. Attaching someone else’s charge to your file based on a loose name match — without verifying date of birth, address history, or other identifying details — falls far short of that standard. The FCRA also requires that when you dispute inaccurate information, HireRight must conduct a genuine reinvestigation, not a rubber-stamp “verification” that simply circles back to the source that supplied the wrong record in the first place. If employment denial caused by HireRight was based on a misattributed record and the company failed to correct it after your dispute, you may have a legal claim for actual damages, lost wages, emotional distress, and potentially punitive damages for willful non-compliance.

Steps to take right now:

Save the HireRight report, the employer’s adverse action notice, and every email or portal message related to your dispute.
Document your financial losses: the rescinded offer, the competing offer you turned down, and any lost wages since your expected start date.
Gather proof that distinguishes you from the person whose record appeared — a government-issued ID, your address history, and anything showing you were elsewhere at the relevant time.
Do not rely on the portal dispute alone. A formal written dispute sent by certified mail creates the paper trail that matters if this goes to litigation.

Consumer Attorneys handles HireRight employment denial cases across the country, and we work on a contingency basis — you pay nothing unless we win. If a wrong record cost you a job, we can escalate your dispute, demand the source record and matching criteria, and pursue compensation for every dollar of harm that followed. Reach out today for a free case review.