Warden Watch

Maryland: Use of Facial Recognition Services in Employment Interviews (Chapter 446 / HB 1202)

MarylandLegislationIn force

Maryland House Bill 1202 (codified as Section 3-717 of the Labor and Employment Article) regulates the use of facial recognition services by employers during job applicant interviews. The statute strictly prohibits employers from using facial recognition services to create a facial template during an employment interview unless the applicant consents by signing a written waiver. Under the law, a facial recognition service includes technology that analyzes facial features for recognition or persistent tracking in images, and a facial template refers to the machine-interpretable pattern extracted from these images. The required waiver must be in plain language and specify the applicant's name, the date of the interview, explicit consent to facial recognition use, and confirmation of whether the applicant read the waiver.

Impact

What this means for HR and vendors

HR and recruitment teams

HR and recruitment teams interviewing job applicants in Maryland must ensure that facial recognition tools are not deployed to generate facial templates unless a compliant written consent waiver is executed beforehand. Operational procedures must be established to present candidates with plain-language waivers containing required elements, including interview date and explicit consent confirmations. HR processes should also accommodate applicants who decline consent by offering interview workflows that do not utilize facial recognition services.

HR technology vendors

HR technology providers supplying interview software with facial recognition capabilities to Maryland employers must support compliance with statutory waiver requirements. While the law directly targets employers, software developers should ensure system functionality allows deployers to manage candidate consent prior to initiating facial feature analysis or creating facial templates during video or live interviews.

Key obligations

What organizations need to do

Practical obligation briefings focused on what the requirement is, who it applies to, when it applies and what teams should consider doing.

OBLIGATION
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