A little-noticed change in Ohio HB268 shortens the waiting period for felony offenders to seek Certificate of Qualification for Employment status—and shifts liability risk to hiring employers.
Most Ohio professional services owners have never heard of the Certificate of Qualification for Employment, or CQE. But if you've hired someone with a felony record, or plan to, a provision buried in HB268 just changed the legal landscape in ways that matter to your bottom line.
Under HB268, effective upon enactment by the 136th General Assembly, felony offenders may now file for a CQE after just one year of release from incarceration—without waiting for their full supervision period to expire.
That supervision period can run long. Ohio law allows up to five years of community control plus five additional years of post-release control. Previously, applicants had to wait until those obligations ended. Now they don't.
The change appears in Section 1, Division (B)(4)(a)(i), on page 2 of the bill.
The CQE exists partly to help people with criminal records re-enter the workforce. But it also carries a legal shield: under Division G of the statute, an employer who hires a CQE holder receives statutory immunity from civil negligent-hiring liability.
That immunity is valuable. It protects you from lawsuits if a CQE employee causes harm and someone claims you should have known better than to hire them.
HB268 expands who can apply for that status. By dropping the supervision-completion requirement, the bill lets felony offenders seek CQE certification much sooner—after one year instead of potentially ten. That means more applicants, faster.
For hiring managers, this creates a choice: you can hire someone with a recent felony conviction who holds a CQE and receive statutory immunity, or you can decline and face potential liability claims if you later hire someone with an unresolved record. The legal incentive to hire CQE holders just got stronger.
The change is permanent. There is no sunset date, so this is the law going forward.
The CQE application process itself hasn't changed—only the timing. Applicants still must meet other eligibility requirements and go through the formal application. But the one-year clock starts from release, not from the end of supervision.
If you work in a field where background checks and hiring decisions are routine—staffing, contracting, professional services—you may see more CQE applications. Understanding what the certification means and how the liability shield works is worth a conversation with your legal counsel.
The statute doesn't require you to hire CQE applicants. It simply means that if you do, you have a legal protection you wouldn't otherwise have.
For a detailed, business-focused summary of HB268 and other Ohio employment law changes, contact your industry association or local chamber of commerce.