Yes, you might potentially have the same privacy and defamation risks as you would with giving a bad reference if you made employee records available to somebody that then communicated those back to the rehire.

Our advice would be having a policy that says an employee terminated for cause or abandonment is not eligible for rehire – full stop. You could also include that any previous employee with an unresolved disciplinary action on their previous employment record with the company is ineligible for rehire.

You may not want to make their record available to all hiring managers, especially if it is for a different position, but you can/could communicate that the employee had an unresolved disciplinary action and not get into specifics.

HR Insider staff.