Police Conditional Offers of Employment: Why You Can Make More Offers Than You Have Openings
(Author: ProFirst Police Background Investigations · Reading time: about 4 minutes) It's hiring-season math every chief knows by heart. You have ten academy seats. You make ten conditional offers. Then two candidates don't clear the psychological evaluation, one doesn't pass the medical exam, and one takes a job with the agency
down the road. The academy starts in three weeks, and you're looking at six cadets.
A lot of agencies run their hiring this way because they assume the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires one conditional offer per open position. It doesn’t. Both federal agencies that enforce the ADA have said for decades that, in the right circumstances, you can make more conditional offers than you have vacancies, and both say so specifically about police hiring.
What Federal Guidance Actually Says
Under the ADA, medical exams and psychological evaluations can only happen after a conditional offer of employment. The U.S. Department of Justice, which enforces the ADA for state and local government employers, answers the offer-pool question directly in its Questions and Answers: The ADA and Hiring Police Officers (Question 15):
A department may make conditional offers to a pool larger than the number of current vacancies, as long as it can show it needs that many offers to fill current or anticipated openings.
When it fills the actual vacancies from that pool, it must notify anyone whose placement is hurt by post-offer medical results or disability-related questions, and show that the decision is “job-related and consistent with business necessity.”
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission takes the same position in its Enforcement Guidance on Preemployment Disability-Related Questions and Medical Examinations (1995). Its own example is a police department that made 50 conditional offers for 25 positions, because roughly half of offers were likely to be revoked after post-offer medical exams or security checks.
The Catch: Be Ready to Show Your Math
The key phrase is "can demonstrate." Making extra offers is defensible when you can explain the number. Before your next hiring cycle:
Pull your own attrition numbers. Over the last few hiring cycles, what percentage of conditional offerees failed the medical or psychological exam, or withdrew? That figure is your justification.
Write it down before the offers go out. A short memo in the hiring file ("Historical post-offer attrition: 30%. Offers issued: 13 for 10 positions.") turns a judgment call into a documented decision.
Plan for the day everyone passes. If more candidates clear the post-offer stage than you have seats, decide in advance how you'll handle it, such as filling the next academy class or reasonably anticipated openings. Have your city or county attorney review that plan.
Notify anyone the medical results move down the list. If post-offer medical or psychological results affect someone’s placement in the pool, the DOJ says that person must be told, and the reason must be job-related.
Apply it the same way to everyone. Consistency is what makes it defensible. It's the same principle behind written police selection standards.
The Order of Steps Still Matters
A conditional offer only counts if it's "real": the employer must have evaluated all the relevant non-medical information it could reasonably obtain before making the offer. For most police agencies, that means the background investigation should be complete before the conditional offer, and the medical and psychological exams come after. The DOJ recognizes a narrow exception when a proper background investigation genuinely can't be finished pre-offer (Question 14 in its Q&A). If you rely on it, document why.
The U.S. Department of Justice has enforced this order of steps against police employers. In 2024 it reached a settlement with the City of Miami Beach to end premature medical exams of police applicants.
A defensible sequence looks like this:
Application and pre-offer testing
Complete background investigation (including employment history, references, criminal and financial history, and a social media review)
Conditional offer of employment
Medical exam and psychological evaluation
Final offer
What This Means for Your Background Unit
More conditional offers means more completed background investigations, all finished before the offers go out. For many departments, that's where the plan stalls. The background unit is one detective with a full caseload, and the academy date doesn't move.
That's the gap ProFirst fills. Our experienced investigators complete thorough, consistent police background investigations for sworn and civilian positions, with applicants guided through a secure background investigation portal. Every file is built to hold up if a hiring decision is ever challenged. If you're planning a larger offer pool for your next academy class, talk to ProFirst about getting those backgrounds done on time.
This article is general information, not legal advice. Consult your agency's legal counsel before changing your conditional-offer practices.