Aren't the credit reporting laws pretty strictly scoped to making decisions about loans? I imagine these companies are pretty explicit with their clients that scores can't be used for those purposes.
Absolutely not. The Fair Credit Reporting Act is one of the laws governing background checks for hiring (in addition to credit reporting), for example.
(and if it comes out that the reports referenced in the article were used by someone somewhere to reach a hiring decision, I expect lawsuits will quickly follow)