NY · state guide
New York background screening law
What is different here
- New York sets its salary threshold at $25,000, not the federal $75,000. The seven-year limit therefore bites on jobs federal law exempts entirely.
- The bar on reporting an arrest is categorical and has no time limit. An arrest or a charge may not be reported at all unless it produced a conviction or the charges are still pending. Federal law allows seven years.
- The state Division of Criminal Justice Services is the only official source of New York criminal history and does not release to third parties or to background check sellers. The file is not public and cannot be obtained by a records request.
- There is no state ban-the-box statute binding private employers. The private-sector rule is a New York City law, and the state statute that does reach private employers is a different instrument entirely, sitting at ten or more employees.
- New York City regulates automated hiring decisions directly, and has done since 2023. It remains the only such law in the country outside Colorado.
How the courts here are organised
New York has 62 counties and a court system organised on county lines for the trial courts that hold criminal records: the superior courts, which are called the Supreme Court in New York despite being the trial level, and the county courts outside the five boroughs. New York City’s five boroughs each sit inside a county, and the city’s criminal court structure does not map onto the upstate one.
The critical thing to hold on to is that three separate institutions are involved and only one of them holds records that a screening provider may lawfully obtain. Losing that distinction is the most common way a New York summary goes wrong.
| Counties | 62 |
|---|---|
| Department of Criminal Justice Services | Holds the criminal history file, and does not release it to third parties |
| Office of Court Administration | Holds court records, and sells conviction records per search |
| County courts | The level a screening search actually runs against |
| New York City | Five boroughs inside five of the 62 counties |
| Statewide CRA-accessible repository | None |
New York is the inverse of a state like Oklahoma. Where Oklahoma centralises, New York closes. The Division of Criminal Justice Services is the sole official source of New York criminal history, and it does not release that information to third parties or to background check sellers. The criminal history record information it holds is not public, and it is not obtainable through a Freedom of Information Law request. A vendor describing a “New York statewide criminal search” is describing something that does not exist as a matter of state practice.
What is available is the judicial branch’s own record. The Office of Court Administration sells conviction records from the courts at a per-search fee, which makes it a genuine and legitimate source rather than a workaround, but it is a court-records product and not the state’s criminal history file. The two are not interchangeable, and the difference is visible in what each one does and does not contain.
The practical shape is therefore county by county, across 62 counties, with the city treated as its own case rather than as five ordinary counties. New York City adds its own overlay on top, which is covered below, and a search that treats a Brooklyn address the way it treats an Albany one will miss the rules that apply.
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 New York adds on top of that floor, and where it departs from it.
What New York law adds
Its own consumer reporting statute
Article 25 of the General Business Law, at §§380-a to 380-t, is materially stricter than the federal statute rather than a mirror of it. It adds restrictions the FCRA does not contain, including two prohibitions with no federal analogue: a bar on requiring or requesting polygraph or deception testing, and a bar on scoring a consumer on the credit standing of the people in their social network.
N.Y. Gen. Bus. Law §§380-a to 380-t · N.Y. Gen. Bus. Law §380-j(g), (h)
Ban-the-box
There is no state statute binding private employers. What exists at state level is Correction Law article 23-A, at §§750 to 755, which binds employers rather than consumer reporting agencies and applies to private employers with ten or more employees. It requires an eight-factor analysis before an adverse decision and requires that the applicant be given a copy of the article itself. A separate city law covers New York City employers from four employees up.
N.Y. Correct. Law §§750–755 · N.Y.C. Admin. Code §8-107(11-a)
Lookback limits
Convictions are reportable for seven years from disposition, release or parole, against a federal rule that imposes no limit on convictions at all. Bankruptcies run to fourteen years. Judgments, paid tax liens and collections each run seven years on their own clocks, measured from entry or from the limitations period rather than from a disposition.
N.Y. Gen. Bus. Law §380-j(f)(1)(v)
Non-conviction reporting
Barred categorically, and this is structurally different from the federal provision rather than merely stricter. An arrest or a charge may not be reported unless it resulted in a conviction or the charges are still pending, with no time limit attached to the bar. The federal rule permits reporting for seven years and then stops; New York does not permit it at all. Sealing provisions in the Criminal Procedure Law reinforce it.
N.Y. Gen. Bus. Law §380-j(a)(1) · N.Y. Crim. Proc. Law §160.50
Salary threshold
$25,000, against a federal figure of $75,000. The credit-transaction and life-insurance exceptions are set at $50,000 each, against federal equivalents of $150,000.
N.Y. Gen. Bus. Law §380-j(f)(2)(iii)
Cannabis
Off-duty lawful conduct is protected, and cannabis falls inside it. The protection is subject to exceptions for a bona fide occupational qualification, a collective bargaining agreement, and a material conflict of interest with the employer’s business.
N.Y. Lab. Law §201-d
Credit checks
Restricted, though New York is not among the states that bar employment credit checks outright. The restrictions sit inside article 25 and operate alongside the federal rules rather than replacing them.
N.Y. Gen. Bus. Law §380-j
Automated decision law
New York City requires an independent bias audit of automated employment decision tools before use and annually thereafter, a published summary of the results, and notice to candidates who are assessed by one. It has been in force since January 2023. The state’s RAISE Act is frequently cited as an AI hiring law and is not one: it regulates frontier model safety and does not reach employment decisions.
N.Y.C. Admin. Code §§20-870 to 20-874 · N.Y. Gen. Bus. Law §§1420–1425
Clean slate
Automatic sealing under the Clean Slate Act, effective 16 November 2024. Misdemeanours seal three years after release or sentencing and felonies after eight. The Office of Court Administration was given up to three years to complete the sealing, which is where the widely repeated late-2027 date for felony sealing comes from: it is the outer end of the implementation window, not the trigger date of the law.
N.Y. Crim. Proc. Law §160.57
Salary history and pay transparency
Both restricted. Employers may not ask for salary history, and pay ranges must be disclosed in postings. The pay transparency duty reaches the employer rather than the screening provider, but it affects how a role is advertised and therefore what a screening request looks like.
N.Y. Lab. Law §194-a · N.Y. Lab. Law §194-b
The statute that surprises people
The $25,000 threshold
N.Y. Gen. Bus. Law §380-j(f)(2)(iii)
Federal law exempts a position paid $75,000 or more from the seven-year limit on non-conviction items. New York sets its own figure at $25,000, and the effect is not a small adjustment. A threshold at a quarter of the federal one reaches most of the workforce in the state, so the seven-year rule applies to roles that a federally-configured screening product would treat as exempt.
The carve-outs sit at different figures from the federal ones as well. The credit-transaction and life-insurance exceptions are set at $50,000 each, where the federal equivalents are $150,000. Whatever a provider has configured for the federal baseline, none of those numbers carry over.
The reason this is worth leading with is that it fails silently. A screening product configured against the federal figures will produce a report that looks correct, cites the right statute and reports an item that New York does not permit to be reported. Nothing in the output flags it, because nothing in the output knows the threshold changed.
Cities that go further than the state
- New York City. The Fair Chance Act applies to employers with four or more employees and is triggered by a conditional offer. It is meaningfully stricter than the state statute on the same subject, which sets its threshold at ten or more employees, so a New York City employer can be covered by the city rule while falling outside the state one. N.Y.C. Admin. Code §8-107(11-a)
- New York City, automated decisions. Local Law 144 requires an independent bias audit of any automated employment decision tool before use and annually after, with a published summary of results and notice to candidates. It has been in effect since 1 January 2023 and enforced since 5 July 2023. Penalties begin at $500 for a first violation and run from $500 to $1,500 for each subsequent one. N.Y.C. Admin. Code §§20-870 to 20-874
Reporting limits at a glance
Every figure below is against New York 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 | Gen. Bus. Law §380-j(f)(1)(v), from disposition, release or parole. Federal law sets no limit on convictions. |
| Lookback, non-conviction | Categorical bar | Gen. Bus. Law §380-j(a)(1). Permitted only on conviction or while charges remain pending. No time limit. |
| Salary threshold | $25,000 | Gen. Bus. Law §380-j(f)(2)(iii). Against a federal figure of $75,000. |
| Credit and insurance exceptions | $50,000 | Gen. Bus. Law §380-j. Against federal equivalents of $150,000. |
| Bankruptcies | 14 years | Gen. Bus. Law §380-j(f)(1)(v). |
| Judgments, paid tax liens, collections | 7 years | Gen. Bus. Law §380-j(f)(1)(v). Measured from entry or from the limitations period. |
| Polygraph and deception testing | Barred | Gen. Bus. Law §380-j(g). No federal analogue. |
| Social network credit scoring | Barred | Gen. Bus. Law §380-j(h). No federal analogue. |
| Cannabis, off-duty use | Protected | Lab. Law §201-d. BFOQ, collective bargaining and material conflict exceptions apply. |
| Automatic sealing, misdemeanour | 3 years | Crim. Proc. Law §160.57. From release or sentencing. |
| Automatic sealing, felony | 8 years | Crim. Proc. Law §160.57. From release or sentencing; sealing itself may lag while the courts work through the backlog. |
Adverse action here
The federal sequence applies: pre-adverse action notice with the report and the summary of rights, a reasonable opportunity to respond, then the adverse action notice. The FCRA article sets it out in full.
New York adds a step that is easy to miss because it is not in the consumer reporting statute at all. Correction Law article 23-A requires the employer to weigh eight enumerated factors before making an adverse decision on a conviction record, and it requires that the applicant be given a copy of the article. That duty sits on the employer, and a screening provider that stops at the federal sequence has not discharged it.
The New York City overlay adds its own notice and timing obligations on top of both. Where a role sits in the city, all three layers apply at once, and they are not alternatives to one another.
Screening in New York: what your process needs
- Confirm the salary threshold is configured at $25,000, not $75,000. This is the single most consequential misconfiguration available in New York and it produces no visible error.
- Confirm the non-conviction bar is implemented as a prohibition rather than as a seven-year window. A federal-shaped configuration will report arrests that New York does not permit at all.
- Confirm the seven-year clock on convictions is actually running, since federal law imposes no such limit and a product built to the federal rule will report an old conviction correctly in most states and incorrectly here.
- Confirm no part of the search sources from DCJS, and that no report describes a New York result as a statewide search.
- Confirm the county coverage set is explicit and named, so a gap across the 62 counties is visible in the report rather than inferred from a summary line.
- Check whether the applicant is in New York City, in which case the city overlay applies on top of the state rules, including the four-employee threshold and the conditional-offer trigger.
- If an automated tool is used on New York City candidates, confirm the bias audit is current and its summary published. The audit is annual, so an audit from last year does not cover this year.
- Confirm the employer knows about the article 23-A eight-factor analysis and the duty to hand the applicant the statute. It is their obligation, and it is separate from anything the report contains.
Related states
What we do
New York cannot be searched from one place, and the state does not pretend otherwise. What a New York report can do is name the counties it searched and the ones it did not, which is the only honest way to describe a state where 62 courts hold the records and the state file is closed.
Sources
- N.Y. Gen. Bus. Law §§380-a to 380-t, article 25
- N.Y. Gen. Bus. Law §380-j, §1420 to §1425
- N.Y. Correct. Law §§750 to 755, article 23-A
- N.Y. Crim. Proc. Law §160.50, §160.57
- N.Y. Lab. Law §194-a, §194-b, §201-d
- N.Y.C. Admin. Code §8-107(11-a)
- N.Y.C. Admin. Code §§20-870 to 20-874, Local Law 144
- New York State Unified Court System, Office of Court Administration record search services
- New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services, criminal history record information policy
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.