Yet there are two reasons to use caution when delving into an applicant's criminal credit and worker's compensation histories. First ( as discussed in Chapter 2) various equal employment laws discourage or prohibit the use of such information in employee screening. For example under the 1997 Americans with Disabilities Act ( ADA) employers are prohibited from making preemployment inquiries into the existence nature or severity of a disability. Therefore a request prior to offering the person a job for information about a candidate's previous worker's compensation claims would likely be viewed as unlawful. Similarly making employment decisions based on someone's arrest record would likely be viewed as unfairly discriminatory since some minorities suffer relatively high arrest rates and an arrest doesn's mean the person is guilty. ( Use of conviction information for particular jobs for instance where security is involved would be less problematical.) The EEOC has also held that a poor credit history should not by itself preclude a person from getting a job.