Teacher sidelined after her common surname is mistakenly linked to another person’s criminal record
Jodi Smith moved with her family from Minnesota to San Jose after her husband accepted a job at Apple. She was hired as a special-education teacher in the Oak Grove School District and began teaching with hopes of building a new life in the Bay Area — until a routine background check upended everything.
A denial from the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC) said Smith had been convicted of driving under the influence in Tulare County in 2009. Smith said the finding was impossible: a fingerprint check showed no criminal history, and she has never been arrested. Yet the CTC initially relied on a name-based report supplied by the California Department of Justice (DOJ).
“I don't know, I think I was just in shock. Literally we had just moved our family 2,000 miles... and then this,” Smith told reporters. “I just moved to the most expensive state in the freaking country. And I immediately lose my job. And that was freaking scary.”
When the DOJ later supplied the detailed rap sheet, it listed arrests for three different people who all shared the surname Smith. One of those entries included the 2009 DUI conviction the CTC used to deny Smith’s credential. The DOJ’s report included a disclaimer that it was a “soft” name-and-number search rather than a fingerprint-based match, but the CTC relied on the report anyway.
While the DOJ investigated and Smith disputed the record, the school district removed her from her lead-teacher role. She was reassigned as a teacher’s aide and then as an emergency substitute: she continued working with the same students but at a fraction of her regular pay. Smith estimates she lost about $24,000 in wages, and she says the experience cost her months of sleep, security, and classroom time with students.
By December the DOJ concluded Smith was not the person convicted in 2009 — at that time she was using her maiden name, Stanton — and cleared her record. She eventually regained her credential, but the disruption had already taken a large personal and financial toll.
Both the DOJ and the CTC declined to comment to reporters about the personal and financial impact of the mistake. The Attorney General’s office noted that by law the DOJ must provide all possible matches for criminal records using multiple identifiers, and licensing authorities rely on those comprehensive searches to protect vulnerable populations such as children and dependent adults.
The AG’s guidance explains that background checks are meant to prevent people with active arrests or convictions from being placed in positions of trust and to protect employers and licensing bodies from potential legal liability. Still, defense attorneys and consumer advocates say people with common surnames are particularly vulnerable to mistaken identity in name-based searches.
Smith filed a claim for her losses, but both agencies are largely immune from civil damages. The DOJ conducts roughly two million background checks each year and says it has a special process to challenge errors, though it did not disclose how often such mistaken matches occur.
What this case shows
- Reliance on name-based background checks can create serious errors, especially for common surnames.
- Fingerprint-based checks are more definitive but may not always be used by licensing bodies as the first step.
- Correcting administrative errors can be slow and costly for the person wrongly identified.
If you believe you have been misidentified in a criminal-record check, contact the agency that produced the report and request a fingerprint-based verification. Consumer advocacy resources, such as local news consumer-help teams, may also assist in navigating disputes.
