Companies can decline to hire someone for a position that requires a security clearance if they have reason to believe that it will be difficult or impossible f

Companies can decline to hire someone for a position that requires a security clearance if they have reason to believe that it will be difficult or impossible for that person to obtain a clearance. There is a specific exception to nondiscrimination laws for this: Section 703(g). Section 703(g) exceptions are somewhat tricky from a HR perspective because they can edge into territory that would normally be an EEO violation (I mean, obviously, since it's an exception to the rule) and there's very little precedent on them. AFAIK, there's only one court case around about it, where a guy was not hired for a cleared position on account of having family in Cuba. [1] The decision not to hire him, based on the reasonable belief that he would not be clearable, was considered acceptable. "Example 3" on that page also gets into another common scenario, which is declining to hire someone based on the belief that their clearance process would be long, and the company has an immediate need. (IMO, this is the most common scenario. Someone with a lot of family in China or Russia might well be clearable, but their clearance might be likely to take too long for them to be a viable candidate, particularly at a company that doesn't have non-cleared work for them to do in the meantime.) [1]: https://www.eeoc.gov/policy/docs/national_security_exemption.html https://www.eeoc.gov/policy/docs/national_security_exemption...