After nearly four years, a lawsuit filed by two Ohio cities over the state’s criminal background check system used by gun sellers, employers and others has been settled.
It’s the first lawsuit in the country over an insufficient background check system, which is a problem in other states too.
Columbus and Dayton sued the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation in 2020, saying since the state’s criminal background check system had incomplete records, it was broken and dangerous. Columbus City Attorney Zach Klein describes the way data was entered and sent in from municipal and county courts was "archaic".
"Sometimes it would get lost in the mail. Sometimes it wouldn't be mailed at all. That's really a threat to public safety," Klein said. "When a city goes to hire a police officer or a firefighter, or if a daycare is hiring a worker, or if someone's going to go purchase a gun and a background check was going to be run in any of those circumstances, you're not going to get a full and accurate picture of who that person is."
“This lawsuit is a win for public safety because there's this recognition now more formalized through this settlement between the state of Ohio and us as the plaintiffs that it's a step towards one, acknowledging there's a problem and two, a concrete plan in a direction to fix it," Klein added.
Some of the specifics of the agreement between the cities and the state are:
- the state will continue to support self-service systems for agencies to submit mandatory criminal reports and resolve errors or omissions on existing records
- the state will look for federal grants to assist in technology upgrades, including creating an online dashboard to track local reporting agencies’ compliance
- both parties agreed to try to secure funding for submitted information electronically and ending mailed paper reporting
- both parties will urge state lawmakers to pass laws to improve the background check system
- the state will offer training for reporting agencies four times a year
- the state will submit quarterly progress reports for three years
Klein says it’s the first lawsuit in the country over an insufficient background check system, which is a problem in other states too.
The Ohio Attorney General's office oversees BCI. A spokesman said in a statement: “We’ve always agreed that cooperation is the best course of action to achieve our mutual goal of an improved background check system. With the litigation behind us, BCI and the cities can now focus our collective resources on making the system a more effective public safety tool.”
