You are correct: under CA law (which follows the guidelines of the Fair Credit Reporting Act or FCRA), criminal records that are more than 7 years old cannot be considered on an employment background check IF the employer uses an outside agency to do the check. If the employer has an in-house person do the check, it may, however, look back further than 7 years: the laws regulating background checks (such as CA civil code section 1768) apply to third-party agencies, not the employer itself.