[afiori]

My take is that it is not about whether the employers have a right to do background checks or not, rather it is about the effect that practice has on society.

If few employers do background checks that ex-convicts have easy to access alternatives it is not a problem, if enough employers use that a new social class of unemployable people is created it becomes a serious problem.

I like the idea of forbidding discrimination based on unrelated offences, but am not particularly informed on the topic.

[afiori]

said another way my claim is that we should have strong anti-discrimination laws for ex-convicts, not for a-priori or theoretical reasons but because they absence is causing a problem.