CA · state guide
California background screening law
What is different here
- California bars non-conviction records categorically, with no time limit, and treats a full pardon as an absolute bar rather than a matter of age.
- The seven-year cap at Civ. Code §1786.18(a)(7) reaches convictions. Federal law exempts convictions from any time limit at all, so this is the sharpest single divergence from the federal baseline.
- There is no salary threshold. The federal $75,000 exemption has no California counterpart, so the seven-year rule applies to every position in the state regardless of pay.
- California’s state criminal history repository is closed to consumer reporting agencies by statute. Employment screening here runs on county superior court records, all 58 of them, because there is no lawful alternative.
- Since 1 October 2025, anyone who supplies an automated decision system to an employer, or runs one on the employer’s behalf, must retain its data and outputs for at least four years.
How the courts here are organised
California has 58 trial courts, one superior court in each county. Each court keeps its own case records. There is no statewide criminal case index held by the judicial branch, and the state’s own courts website says so plainly: each court is responsible for keeping its own records, and a searcher must contact the individual superior court.
That arrangement is not an accident of history or a gap waiting to be filled by a vendor. It is the shape the judicial branch was built to, and the reason it matters commercially is that it makes a “California statewide criminal search” an assembly of county pulls by construction. Any gap in that assembly is a coverage gap, not a completeness guarantee.
| Trial courts | 58 superior courts, one per county |
|---|---|
| Statewide criminal case index | None exists |
| County superior court records | Searchable directly |
| State repository (DOJ) | Closed to consumer reporting agencies |
| Counties | 58 |
| Appellate records | Published, and not the relevant layer for screening |
The state repository is the part that surprises people, because most states let a screening provider pull from one. California does not. Pen. Code §11105(b) is a closed list of who may receive state summary criminal history information, and it is government recipients. Pen. Code §11105(b)(13) is the only private route in, and it requires an authorising statute that both expressly refers to specific criminal conduct applicable to the subject person and contains requirements or exclusions expressly based on that conduct. Ordinary employment screening has no such statute behind it.
The strings “consumer reporting” and “reporting agency” appear zero times in the full text of §11105. They appear zero times in §13300, which does the same job for local summary criminal history. The Department of Justice states the position itself: it will only approve an organisation that is authorised by statute to require applicants to undergo fingerprint-based criminal history background checks. Disseminating the information without authorisation carries civil fines and criminal penalties under Pen. Code §§11142 and 11143.
The one employer-facing channel at the DOJ is §11105.3, which is fingerprint-based and confined to positions carrying supervisory or disciplinary power over a minor or a person under their care. It contains no reference to consumer reporting either, which is why it is not a screening route.
The practical consequence is the whole argument for how a California search has to be run. There is no bulk source, no shortcut and no vendor product that changes this, because the restriction is statutory rather than technical.
The federal baseline
Federal law sets the floor here as it does everywhere. It is at 15 U.S.C. §1681 et seq., it binds the agency and the employer separately, and it does not vary by state. The FCRA article covers it section by section, including the seven-year limits, the salary threshold and the adverse action sequence, so that this page does not restate any of it.
What follows is only the overlay: what California adds on top of that floor, and where it departs from it.
What California law adds
Its own consumer reporting statute
California has two. The Investigative Consumer Reporting Agencies Act, at Civ. Code §§1786 to 1786.60, governs the reports used for employment screening and is stricter than the federal statute. The Consumer Credit Reporting Agencies Act at §§1785 et seq. sits alongside it and applies to credit information.
Civ. Code §§1786–1786.60 · Civ. Code §§1785 et seq.
Ban-the-box
Covered, and it reaches every employer with five or more employees, with no distinction between public and private. The trigger is a conditional offer of employment, not an interview. There is no salary threshold attached, and no exception for positions with statutory screening duties.
Gov. Code §12952
Lookback limits
Seven years from the date of disposition, release or parole, for arrests, indictments, informations, misdemeanour complaints and convictions alike. The inclusion of convictions is what separates California from federal law, which caps the non-conviction items but leaves convictions reportable indefinitely. A parallel ten-year outer limit applies to adverse information on a consumer credit report.
Civ. Code §1786.18(a)(7) · Civ. Code §1785.13(d)
Non-conviction reporting
Barred categorically. The same subsection that sets the seven-year clock adds that an item may no longer be reported if it is learned that a conviction has been fully pardoned, or that an arrest, indictment, information or misdemeanour complaint did not result in conviction. That bar is separate from the seven-year rule and has no time limit of its own. The employer-side parallel at Labor Code §432.7 bars asking about an arrest that did not result in conviction and bars using one in a hiring decision.
Civ. Code §1786.18(a)(7) · Cal. Lab. Code §432.7
Salary threshold
None. Section 1786.18(b) excepts only life-insurance underwriting at $250,000 or more and a check explicitly required by a governmental regulatory agency. A search of both full section bodies for the federal figure returns nothing. The consequence is that the seven-year limit, including its reach into convictions, applies to a $30,000 job exactly as it applies to a $300,000 one.
Civ. Code §1786.18(b)
Cannabis
Two separate rules. Off-duty use is protected: employers may not discriminate for use away from work or for a test showing only nonpsychoactive metabolites, and may not ask about prior use. The building and construction trades are excluded, and nothing in the section authorises use on the job. Separately, a set of older marijuana convictions becomes unusable two years from conviction under Labor Code §432.8.
Gov. Code §12954 · Cal. Lab. Code §432.8
Credit checks
Restricted by position type rather than by salary. An employer may not use a consumer credit report for most positions, and the exceptions are defined by what the job involves rather than by what it pays, with the employer carrying the burden of showing the exception applies.
Cal. Lab. Code §1024.5
Automated decision law
In force, and the most directly relevant law in the country to how CourtScopeAI works. The Civil Rights Council’s automated-decision systems regulations at 2 CCR §11008.1 took effect on 1 October 2025, and §11013(c)(8) requires anyone who sells or provides an automated decision system or its selection criteria to an employer, or who uses one on the employer’s behalf, to retain the system data, training set, modelling and assessment criteria, and outputs for at least four years after the last date of use. The general retention period in §11013(c) moved from two years to four at the same time. A further layer, the Privacy Protection Agency’s rules at 11 CCR §§7200 et seq., requires use predating 1 January 2027 to be in compliance by that date.
2 CCR §11008.1 · 2 CCR §11013(c)(8) · 11 CCR §§7200 et seq.
Medical debt
Barred outright from an investigative consumer report, with a companion bar on the credit side. There is no job-relatedness exception and no salary band that lifts it.
Civ. Code §1786.18(a)(9) · Civ. Code §1785.13(a)(7)
Clean slate
Automatic relief under Pen. Code §1203.425, operative 1 October 2024. The Department of Justice grants relief monthly without any petition, and the “relief granted” note propagates to all statewide criminal databases. Because California screening runs on county court records rather than the state repository, the propagation matters less here than it would elsewhere, and a sealed record may still surface at the county level.
Pen. Code §1203.425
The statute that surprises people
The two-year clock on old cannabis convictions
Cal. Lab. Code §432.8
California’s general rule is seven years. Labor Code §432.8, on the books since 1976, sets a shorter one for a specified set of marijuana convictions: two years from the date of conviction, after which the conviction may not be used in a hiring decision at all.
It catches people out for two reasons. The first is the length, which is less than a third of the standard window and far shorter than federal law, which imposes no limit on convictions whatsoever. The second is that it is an employer-side restriction rather than an agency-side one. It does not tell a consumer reporting agency what it may report. It tells an employer what it may do with what it receives.
That distinction runs through California screening law and is worth holding on to. Labor Code §§432.7, 432.8 and 1024.5 constrain the employer. Civil Code §1786.18 constrains the agency. A compliance failure can sit entirely on one side of that line while the other side has done everything correctly.
Reporting limits at a glance
Every figure below is against California law. Where a row says “federal only”, the state has set nothing and 15 U.S.C. §1681c governs.
| Dimension | Limit | Source and qualification |
|---|---|---|
| Lookback, convictions | 7 years | Civ. Code §1786.18(a)(7), from disposition, release or parole. Federal law sets no limit on convictions at all. |
| Lookback, non-conviction | Categorical bar | Civ. Code §1786.18(a)(7). No time limit of its own; the item may never be reported once it is known no conviction resulted. |
| Full pardon | Absolute bar | Civ. Code §1786.18(a)(7). Bars reporting on learning of the pardon, regardless of the record’s age. |
| Salary threshold | None | Civ. Code §1786.18(b) excepts only life-insurance underwriting at $250,000 or more and government-mandated checks. The federal $75,000 figure has no counterpart. |
| Cannabis, off-duty use | Protected | Gov. Code §12954. Does not cover the building and construction trades and does not authorise use on the job. |
| Cannabis, old convictions | 2 years | Cal. Lab. Code §432.8. Employer-side: restricts use in a hiring decision, not the agency’s reporting. |
| Medical debt | Barred | Civ. Code §1786.18(a)(9); companion bar at §1785.13(a)(7). No exception. |
| Credit checks | Position-based | Cal. Lab. Code §1024.5. Not a salary test; the exceptions turn on what the position involves. |
| Public record verification | 30 days | Civ. Code §1786.18(c). Records must be verified within 30 days before being furnished. |
| Outer limit, credit report | 10 years | Civ. Code §1785.13(d). Adverse information may not antedate the report by more than ten years. |
| Automated decision retention | 4 years | 2 CCR §11013(c)(8), in force since 1 October 2025. Runs from the last date the system was used. |
Adverse action here
The federal sequence applies unchanged: pre-adverse action notice with a copy of the report and the summary of rights, a reasonable opportunity to respond, then the adverse action notice with the agency’s details and a dispute route. The FCRA article sets the sequence out in full.
California adds a disclosure duty that belongs to the employer rather than to the agency, and it is the single most commonly misassigned obligation in the state. Section 1786.16 sits under a heading about the obligations of investigative consumer reporting agencies, but its operative text binds the person who procures the report. It requires a clear and conspicuous disclosure in a document consisting solely of the disclosure, and it requires the consumer to receive a copy of the report within three business days.
Enforcement is real and it is not a federal-only exposure. Section 1786.50 provides for actual damages or $10,000, whichever is greater, plus punitive damages for a willful violation, with attorney’s fees. That private right of action sits alongside whatever the FCRA provides for the same conduct.
Screening in California: what your process needs
- Confirm the seven-year cap is being applied to convictions, not just to arrests. A configuration inherited from a federally-compliant setup will report convictions of any age and be wrong here.
- Confirm the pardon and no-conviction bars are implemented as absolute. They do not expire and a date-based filter will not catch them.
- Confirm that any California search is documented as a set of county superior court pulls, with the counties named, so a coverage gap can be seen rather than inferred.
- Confirm no attempt is made to source California employment screening from the state DOJ repository. It is a closed list and an unauthorised pull carries criminal penalties under §§11142 and 11143.
- Check whether the employer’s own disclosure document meets §1786.16, including the sole-document requirement and the three-business-day copy. This is the employer’s duty, not the agency’s.
- If any automated decision system touches California applicants, confirm the four-year retention duty at 2 CCR §11013(c)(8) is live, and diarise the 1 January 2027 date for the privacy rules at 11 CCR §§7200 et seq.
- Confirm the pay-transparency posting duty at Labor Code §432.3 is met, including for third parties posting on the employer’s behalf, which the current amendment expressly reaches.
Related states
What we do
A California search is 58 separate questions about coverage, and the answer changes depending on where a person has lived and which court holds the record. That routing decision is what CourtScopeAI does, and it is the reason a California report from here can name the counties it searched rather than describing a statewide search that does not exist.
Sources
- Cal. Civ. Code §§1786 to 1786.60, Investigative Consumer Reporting Agencies Act
- Cal. Civ. Code §§1785 et seq., Consumer Credit Reporting Agencies Act
- Cal. Civ. Code §1786.18, §1786.16, §1786.50
- Cal. Gov. Code §12952, §12954, §12999
- Cal. Lab. Code §432.3, §432.7, §432.8, §980, §1024.5
- Cal. Pen. Code §11105, §11105.3, §13300, §11142, §11143, §1203.425
- 2 CCR §11008.1, §11013
- 11 CCR §§7200 et seq.
- California Courts, self-help on criminal records and court records
Last reviewed 23 September 2026. This page is checked on a quarterly cycle, because state screening law changes every legislative session. Nothing here is legal advice; see the terms of use.