Document ID: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca9-18-55804/USCOURTS-ca9-18-55804-0/pdf.json

Parties Involved:
Does
Appellee
Ian Hall
Appellant
Hansen and Adkins Auto Transport, Inc.
Appellee
Leonard Luna
Appellant

Document Text:

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

LEONARD LUNA, on behalf of 

themselves and all others similarly 

situated; IAN HALL,

Plaintiffs-Appellants,

v.

HANSEN AND ADKINS AUTO 

TRANSPORT, INC., a California 

Corporation; DOES, 1–10, inclusive,

Defendants-Appellees.

No. 18-55804

D.C. No.

8:17-cv-00990-

DOC-KES

OPINION

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Central District of California

David O. Carter, District Judge, Presiding

Submitted November 4, 2019*

Pasadena, California

Filed April 24, 2020

* The panel unanimously concludes this case is suitable for decision 

without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(a)(2).

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2 LUNA V. HANSEN & ADKINS AUTO TRANSPORT

Before: Jerome Farris, M. Margaret McKeown,

and Barrington D. Parker, Jr.,** Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge McKeown

SUMMARY***

Fair Credit Reporting Act

Affirming the district court’s summary judgment in 

favor of defendant, the panel held that an employer does not 

violate the Fair Credit Reporting Act by providing a FCRA 

disclosure simultaneously with other employment materials, 

and by failing to place a FCRA authorization on a standalone 

document.

The panel held that 15 U.S.C. § 1681b(b)(2)(A)(i), 

forbidding procurement of a consumer report for 

employment purposes unless “a clear and conspicuous 

disclosure has been made in writing to the consumer . . . in a 

document that consists solely of the disclosure,” does not 

prohibit the presentation of the disclosure together with other 

application materials. The panel held that the copresentation of the disclosure and an authorization did not 

render the disclosure neither clear nor conspicuous. Further, 

the FCRA requires only that a consumer authorization be “in 

** The Honorable Barrington D. Parker, Jr., United States Circuit 

Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, sitting by 

designation.

*** This summary constitutes no part of the opinion of the court. It 

has been prepared by court staff for the convenience of the reader.

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LUNA V. HANSEN & ADKINS AUTO TRANSPORT 3

writing,” not that it be put in a clear and conspicuous, 

standalone document.

COUNSEL

Aashish Y. Desai and Adrianne DeCastro, Desai Law Firm, 

Costa Mesa, California, for Plaintiffs-Appellants.

Victor J. Consentino, Larson & Gaston LLP, Pasadena, 

California, for Defendant-Appellee.

OPINION

McKEOWN, Circuit Judge:

Leonard Luna joins a long line of litigants challenging 

aspects of the federal consumer credit report regime. His 

theory, however, is more novel than most: Luna contends an 

employer violates the Fair Credit Reporting Act (“FCRA”) 

by providing a FCRA disclosure simultaneously with other 

employment materials, and by failing to place a FCRA 

authorization on a standalone document. His argument is 

thwarted by the statute itself. We affirm the district court’s 

summary adjudication of Luna’s claim.

Luna is a former employee of Hansen & Adkins, a 

vehicle transportation business employing over 1,100 big rig 

truckers, mechanics, dispatchers, and other support staff. 

His FCRA claim stems from Hansen & Adkins’s hiring 

process, which involved a Commercial Driver Employment 

Application (“the Application”). This multi-form, multipage application included notices and authorizations 

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4 LUNA V. HANSEN & ADKINS AUTO TRANSPORT

permitting Hansen & Adkins to retrieve safety history and 

driving records, and conduct drug and background checks.1

Job applicants signed two documents related to 

consumer reports. One, “the disclosure,” appeared on a 

separate sheet of paper, and informed applicants “that 

reports verifying your previous employment, previous drug 

and alcohol test results, and your driving record may be 

obtained on you for employment purposes.” The other, “the 

authorization,” indicated that an applicant’s signature 

authorized Hansen & Adkins “or their subsidiaries or agents 

to investigate my previous record of employment.” The 

authorization appeared at the end of the Application, and 

included other notices, waivers, and agreements unrelated to 

acquiring the consumer report.

Luna filed a putative class action alleging Hansen & 

Adkins’s hiring process violated FCRA’s disclosure and 

authorization requirements. We review de novo the district 

court’s grant of summary judgment, viewing the evidence in 

the light most favorable to Luna, the non-moving party. 

United States v. Phattey, 943 F.3d 1277, 1280 (9th Cir. 

2019).

FCRA forbids procurement of a consumer report for 

employment purposes unless “a clear and conspicuous 

disclosure has been made in writing to the consumer . . . in a 

document that consists solely of the disclosure.” 15 U.S.C.

1 Background checks such as these are classified as consumer 

reports under FCRA, as they are provided by credit reporting agencies 

and concern an applicant’s “character, general reputation, personal 

characteristics, or mode of living which is used or expected to be used or 

collected in whole or in part for the purpose of serving as a factor in 

establishing the consumer's eligibility for...employment purposes.” 

15 U.S.C.A. § 1681a(d)(1)(B).

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LUNA V. HANSEN & ADKINS AUTO TRANSPORT 5

§ 1681b(b)(2)(A)(i). Luna claims Hansen & Adkins 

violated this provision by presenting the disclosure together 

with other application materials. This argument stretches the 

statute’s requirements beyond the limits of law and common 

sense. It is true that FCRA requires “that a disclosure form 

contain nothing more than the disclosure itself,” Walker v. 

Fred Meyer, Inc., No. 18-35592, 2020 WL 1316691, at *5 

(9th Cir. Mar. 20, 2020), but no authority suggests that a 

disclosure must be distinct in time, as well.

Luna nevertheless attempts to bootstrap FCRA’s 

physical requirement into a temporal one, relying on Syed v. 

M-I, LLC, 853 F.3d 492 (9th Cir. 2017). In Syed, we held 

that the inclusion of a liability waiver in a disclosure 

document violated FCRA, because the statute 

“unambiguously requires a document that ‘consists solely of 

the disclosure.’” Id. at 500 (citing 15 U.S.C. 

§ 1681b(b)(2)(A)(i)). Observing that the “ordinary meaning 

of ‘solely’ is ‘[a]lone; singly’ or ‘[e]ntirely; exclusively,’” 

we concluded that FCRA precludes the inclusion of any 

terms besides a disclosure and an exempted authorization. 

Id. (citing American Heritage Dictionary of the English 

Language 1666 (5th ed. 2011)); see also Walker, 2020 WL 

1316691 at *5 (“Simply put, the disclosure form should not 

contain any extraneous information.” (internal punctuation 

and citation omitted)). But nothing in Syed can be read to 

prohibit an employer from providing a standalone FCRA 

disclosure contemporaneously with other employment 

documents.

Indeed, we decisively rejected this argument last year, 

noting that no “judicial authority, legislative history or 

dictionary definition” supports the proposition “that the 

word ‘document,’ as used in FCRA, encompasses the 

universe of employment application materials furnished by 

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6 LUNA V. HANSEN & ADKINS AUTO TRANSPORT

an employer to a prospective employee.” Gilberg v. Cal. 

Check Cashing Stores, LLC, 913 F.3d 1169, 1174 (9th Cir. 

2019). Were we to accept Luna’s argument that a FCRA 

disclosure cannot be presented together with other 

employment documents, “it is difficult to see how an 

employer could ever provide an applicant written application 

materials without violating FCRA’s standalone document 

requirement.” Id. Hansen & Adkins’s disclosure may have 

been provided alongside other application materials, but it 

appeared in a standalone document—precisely what FCRA 

requires.

The disclosure is similarly “clear and conspicuous,” 

which we have interpreted in the context of FCRA to mean 

a “reasonably understandable form” that is “readily 

noticeable to the consumer.” 15 U.S.C. § 1681b(b)(2)(A)(i); 

Gilberg, 913 F.3d at 1176 (citations omitted). The 

disclosure, entitled “FAIR CREDIT REPORTING ACT 

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT,” explains in plain 

language that, as required by law, the applicant is “informed 

that reports verifying your previous employment, 

previous drug and alcohol test results, and your driving 

record may be obtained on you for employment 

purposes.” Aside from this notice, the disclosure contains 

nothing but the employer logos and signature lines. It is 

reproduced below.

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LUNA V. HANSEN & ADKINS AUTO TRANSPORT 7

Luna contends the co-presentation of the disclosure and 

authorization renders the disclosure neither clear nor 

conspicuous. But it is both, and applicants, such as big-rig 

truckers, can be expected to notice a standalone document 

featuring a bolded, underlined, capital-lettered heading.

Luna argues Hansen & Adkins also violated FCRA by 

failing to put the authorization in a clear and conspicuous, 

standalone document. This attempted wholesale importation 

of FCRA’s disclosure requirements runs aground on the 

statutory language, which provides only that a prospective 

employer must obtain the authorization “in writing.” 

15 U.S.C. § 1681b(b)(2)(A)(ii). Crucially, the authorization 

subsection of FCRA lacks the disclosure subsection’s 

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8 LUNA V. HANSEN & ADKINS AUTO TRANSPORT

standalone document requirement. Compare 15 U.S.C. 

§ 1681b(b)(2)(A)(ii) with 15 U.S.C. § 1681b(b)(2)(A)(i). 

“[T]he authorization form is not relevant to the disclosure 

form standard set forth in the statute where, as here, the 

authorization is not included in the Disclosure.” Walker,

2020 WL 1316691 at *4 n.3. As FCRA dictates only that a 

consumer authorization be “in writing,” without specifying 

its format, Hansen & Adkins’s authorization conformed to 

the requirements of the statute.

AFFIRMED.

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