Just as Oregon’s employers sort out the impact of the state’s legalization of marijuana, comes another change to the way we do business.

Lawmakers earlier this year approved a “ban the box” measure that goes into effect on the first of the year. Unlike the marijuana bill, it will make a difference in how most Oregon businesses screen potential employees. The bill that ultimately was adopted is, by the way, a major improvement on the measure as it was originally introduced.

Oregon’s new ban-the-box law makes it illegal for most, but not all, employers, to ask up front about a potential employee’s criminal record.

That doesn’t mean employers cannot ask about prior criminal histories at all, which is a welcome change over the original version of the measure, House Bill 3025. Employers will be able to consider criminal history, though only after an initial interview or a conditional job offer.

Nor, as the original measure did, does the law make it illegal for employers to refuse employment to those with criminal histories unless that history was somehow directly related to the job at hand.

With those changes comes a law that actually makes some sense. Not all convictions are equal, and it can be unfair to refuse to consider a potential employee because of some of them. Under the old law, employers might never have given a potentially good employee a chance because of a screening process that automatically eliminated job applicants with criminal histories.

The change is aimed at giving a job candidate with a record the opportunity to explain his or her prior actions before being automatically shown to the door. If, as the National Employment Law Project claims, about a third of all adult Americans have some criminal record, it makes little sense to exclude them from a fair shot at the job market.

To date, some 19 states have passed ban-the-box legislation, meanwhile. While most apply the rule only to government agencies, seven, including Oregon, apply it to private employers as well.

It makes sense, meanwhile, to give employers the right to say no to workers with criminal records, if they wish. Some will, but others might not.