State overlay
State background screening law
Federal law is the floor. These guides cover what changes on top of it, state by state, and how each state’s courts are organised well enough to actually search.
California
CACalifornia bars non-conviction records categorically and sets no salary threshold at all, while its state criminal history repository is statutorily closed to consumer reporting agencies. Every search runs on county superior courts, all 58 of them.
Court structureState lawNew York
NYNew York sets its salary threshold at $25,000, so the seven-year limit reaches jobs federal law exempts, and its bar on reporting arrests has no time limit attached to it.
Court structureState lawWashington
WAWashington cut its salary threshold to $20,000, which reaches effectively every job in the state, and bars juvenile records outright for anyone 21 or older, while still allowing arrest records on the same clock as convictions.
Court structureState lawMinnesota
MNMinnesota is the only state in this set whose ban-the-box law binds private employers with no size threshold, and it restricts cannabis testing as a condition of employment where the other four do not.
Court structureState lawOklahoma
OKOklahoma centralises where almost everyone else fragments. Its court system publishes a county-indexed docket search across all 77 counties from one place, which is the inverse of the county-by-county problem in California and Texas.
Court structureState law
This set is being written state by state. A state gets a guide when there is a question that is genuinely different there; where there is nothing beyond federal law, one page will cover those states together rather than fifty pages saying the same thing.