DE · state guide

Delaware background screening law

How the courts here are organized

Delaware is not a county-based court state, and that is the fact that decides how a search here is scoped. County is not the natural unit of criminal record search here; the court is. The felony and misdemeanor split runs between two statewide courts, and the three counties (New Castle, Kent and Sussex) appear on the Judiciary's own pages as the locations of Superior Court offices rather than as separate judicial systems.

The Superior Court is the court of general jurisdiction. The Judiciary describes it as "the State's court of general jurisdiction, has original jurisdiction over criminal and civil cases except equity cases. The Court has exclusive jurisdiction over felonies and almost all drug offenses." It also sits as an intermediate appellate court, and its jurisdiction page states that it "has statewide original jurisdiction over criminal and civil cases". A felony disposition therefore sits in one statewide court and not in a county file.

The Court of Common Pleas is the misdemeanor court and it is also the felony gateway. "In criminal cases, the Court of Common Pleas handles all misdemeanors occurring in the State except certain drug-related offenses and traffic offenses... The Court is also responsible for all preliminary hearings in felony cases." Its civil limit is $75,000, and the Judiciary records that "The statewide Court of Common Pleas was created by Title 10, Chapter 13 of the Delaware Code". A felony therefore commonly has a Court of Common Pleas record for the preliminary hearing and a Superior Court record for the disposition.

The Justice of the Peace Court takes the lower tier and the motor vehicle caseload. "In criminal cases, the Justice of the Peace Court hears certain misdemeanors and most motor vehicle cases (excluding felonies) and the Justices of the Peace may act as committing magistrates for all crimes." Its civil limit is $25,000. The Supreme Court, the Court of Chancery and the Family Court complete the structure, and none of the six is a county court.

The online docket does not cover criminal cases, and the operator says so in its own words. The Judiciary's docket page is titled "Civil Case Search" and states: "The Superior Court, Court of Common Pleas and Justice of the Peace Court now offer the ability to access civil case information online 24-hours a day through CourtConnect." On the criminal side the same public-access document states that "The Superior Court civil and criminal docket and all non-confidential documents are available for viewing for free through public access terminals located in the courthouses in each of the three counties in Delaware... Remote access to the civil docket is only available through File & Serve Express... (subscription required and fees apply)." Remote access is offered for the civil docket and not for the criminal one.

The aggregate-record route is closed by directive rather than by statute, and it is closed even at the courthouse counter. Superior Court Administrative Directive No. 2000-5, § I.F provides that "Criminal history records containing cumulative case-related information on individuals related to criminal proceeding in more than one court (i.e., criminal history records obtained through DELJIS) shall not be disclosed", while "Case-related records providing information on a person related to proceedings occurring at Superior Court may be disclosed". Section I.M of the same directive adds that "Expunged judicial records are exempt from disclosure". The courthouse terminal is therefore a single-court window rather than a criminal history service.

The practical consequence is that a screening product has to go court by court, and that the criminal docket cannot be bought in bulk. There is no public bulk criminal docket to purchase, no free statewide online criminal case search, and no remote criminal docket at all: the free terminal access is in the courthouses of the three counties, and the remote subscription product, File & Serve Express, is offered for the civil docket.

The repository is a different thing from the docket and the difference is in the definitions. Section 8502 of Title 11 defines criminal history record information so as to exclude court records of public judicial proceedings and police blotters and the like, which means the State Bureau of Identification file and the court file are separate sources with separate access rules. A search that reports one of them as though it were the other is describing the wrong source for what it holds.

The repository side has its own mechanics and its own limits. The State Bureau of Identification is designated the central state repository by § 8501(b)(1), a certified history is obtained through fingerprints, the fee is $72.00 for the state product and $85.00 for a state and federal product that "must be mandated by law", and fingerprinting is available at nine IdentoGO locations. The Delaware State Police states of its individual-request product: "The service code to receive a personal certified Delaware Criminal History report is 27RVGT. Please note that this report will not fulfill the criminal history report for legally mandated agencies, entities, or organizations. This report is for the personal use of a citizen and will only be issued to the requesting citizen." Community reporting points at that product because it is the visible one, and it is not the product a hiring process can use.

The completeness question has a statutory answer that is worth quoting rather than paraphrasing. Section 8506(a) requires the Bureau to maintain information "in a complete and accurate manner" only "to the maximum extent feasible", and employment furnishing under § 8513(c)(1) is a "may" tied to "the availability of resources and priorities set by the Superintendent of State Police". A Delaware repository result is therefore a discretionary and resource-dependent product limited to "the identification and conviction data", and not a promise of a complete criminal history.

The routing conclusion is that a Delaware answer has to say which source produced it. A repository response is a fingerprint-based record of conviction data, furnished at the Bureau's discretion on a fee, with use confined to the purpose for which it was given, and with neither onward dissemination nor federal CHRI available to a private entity. A court response is a Superior Court matter for a felony, a Court of Common Pleas matter for a misdemeanor, and possibly a Justice of the Peace matter for the lower tier, with the felony preliminary hearing sitting in Common Pleas. No single one of these is a Delaware criminal history, and neither the county nor a bulk docket is the unit that joins them.

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 Delaware adds on top of that floor, and where it departs from it.

What Delaware law adds

Reporting limits at a glance

Every figure below is against Delaware law. Where a row says “federal only”, the state has set nothing and 15 U.S.C. §1681c governs.

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 dispute, then the adverse action notice with the agency details and a dispute route. The FCRA article sets it out in full.

Delaware adds no state adverse-action notice duty for a criminal-history report. There is no state mini-FCRA, no state reporting window and no state pre-request notice for a criminal-history search, so the federal sequence is the whole of the procedural requirement on that side. The state overlays that do exist sit elsewhere: the ban-the-box and credit rule at § 711(h) governs inquiry and consideration rather than notice, and the compensation-history and pay-posting provisions at §§ 709B and 709C attach to the hiring conversation rather than to a screening decision.

The expungement rule is the one that should shape the letter and the question that precedes it. Section 4372(d) provides that a person is not required to disclose, "nor should the person be asked to disclose", an expunged arrest, charge or conviction, and § 4376(e) provides that an expunged offense "does not have to be disclosed by the person for any reason". An adverse action resting on an expunged matter is therefore resting on something the applicant was entitled not to mention and the screener should not have asked about, and § 4372(e)(4) means the agency or court route would have answered "there is no record".

Disclosure by whoever holds an expunged record carries its own exposure. Section 4376(a)(1) makes disclosure by anyone with access to expunged records a class B misdemeanor absent a court order, with exceptions for law-enforcement duties and law-enforcement employment applications. A report that carries an expunged matter, or a letter that confirms one to an employer, is the failure this provision is aimed at, and it is a bigger risk in Delaware than the reporting of a non-conviction as such.

A marijuana test result is a discrimination question before it is a reporting question. Section 4905A(a)(3) bars an employer from discriminating in hiring, termination or any term or condition of employment, or otherwise penalizing a person, on the basis of "The person's status as a cardholder" or "A registered qualifying patient's positive drug test for marijuana components or metabolites", unless the patient used, possessed or was impaired by marijuana on the premises of the place of employment or during the hours of employment, and unless the failure to act would cost the employer a federal monetary or licensing-related benefit. Section 4907A(a)(3) provides that a registered qualifying patient is not considered to be under the influence "solely because of the presence of metabolites or components of marijuana". An adverse decision that cites a positive test against a cardholder has to be analyzed against those terms first. The adult-use chapter provides no support in the other direction, because § 1304 disclaims any requirement or restriction on employers.

Where the record came from decides what the letter may rely on. Section 8513(c)(1) confines the use of Bureau conviction data to the purpose for which it was given, § 8513(d) makes onward dissemination prohibited, and § 8527(e) keeps federal CHRI from private entities. Directive 2000-5 § I.F bars disclosure of a cumulative multi-court criminal history obtained through DELJIS, so a report that presents one is presenting something the court system itself will not release at the counter. On the licensing side, § 1313(a) requires a license before engaging in the business of a private investigative agency and chapter 13 contains no exemption for a consumer reporting agency or an employment background screener, which is a question to settle before Delaware work is taken on rather than after a letter is sent.

Screening in Delaware: what your process needs

• Read § 711(h) before drafting anything, and read the definition first. It binds "any public employer", defined at § 710(21) as the State of Delaware, its agencies or political subdivisions. For a private employer in Delaware the section is not the constraint, and no private-employer ban-the-box statute was found.
• If the employer is a public body, keep the criminal-history and credit questions out of the initial application process "up to and including the first interview". Subsection (h)(1) covers inquiry and consideration, and (h)(2) opens the subject "after the completion of the first interview" for an otherwise qualified applicant.
• Run the (h)(3) analysis if criminal history is a basis for the decision. The exclusion must be job related for the position in question and consistent with business necessity, and the employer shall consider the nature and gravity of the offense, the time that has passed since the offense or the completion of the sentence, and the nature of the job sought.
• Check (h)(4) before treating a protected position as covered. State, county and municipal police forces, the Department of Correction, the Department of Justice, the Office of Defense Services and the courts are outside the subsection, as is any position where federal or state statute requires or expressly permits the consideration of criminal history.
• Do not publish a Delaware seven-year rule. There is none, and the Code search for "seven years" returned nothing on consumer reporting. The seven-year limits that apply are the federal ones at FCRA § 605.
• Run an expungement check before reporting anything. Section 4372(d) says the person need not disclose and should not be asked, § 4372(e)(4) has agencies and courts replying "there is no record", and § 4376(e) says an expunged offense need not be disclosed "for any reason". Section 4373 makes expungement mandatory on application after 3 years for violations, 5 years for misdemeanors and 10 years for listed felonies, and § 4373A makes it automatic from 1 August 2024 for the records it covers.
• Do not ask the applicant about expunged conduct. The disclosure exposure at § 4376(a)(1) is a class B misdemeanor for anyone with access to expunged records, absent a court order and outside the law-enforcement exceptions, and asking is the step that produces the record a report would then carry.
• Check cardholder status before acting on a marijuana test. Section 4905A(a)(3) protects status and a registered qualifying patient's positive test for components or metabolites, subject to the on-premises and on-hours carve-out and the federal-benefit-loss exception, and § 4907A(a)(3) says metabolites alone do not make a registered patient "under the influence".
• Do not tell a Delaware client that the adult-use law protects off-duty use or a positive test. Section 1304 disclaims any requirement or restriction on employers with respect to terms and conditions of employment, and the employment protections were removed from the bill before passage.
• Do not treat the State Bureau of Identification as an on-demand source. Section 8513(c)(1) is a "may" tied to the availability of resources and the Superintendent's priorities, it furnishes "the identification and conviction data", it is fee-funded, and the use "shall be limited to the purpose for which it was given".
• Do not resell Delaware criminal history. Section 8513(d) prohibits dissemination "by any person or agency other than the Bureau or its designee", which puts the resale of a Delaware CHRI outside what a private screener may lawfully do.
• Do not seek the federal record through the state. Section 8527(e) keeps federal CHRI from any private entity absent express FBI authorization, and the $85.00 state and federal product is for checks that "must be mandated by law".
• Do not rely on the 27RVGT personal report for a hiring check. The operator states that it "will not fulfill the criminal history report for legally mandated agencies, entities, or organizations" and that it is for the personal use of a citizen and will only be issued to the requesting citizen.
• Do not run Delaware county by county. The courts are statewide: the Superior Court holds exclusive jurisdiction over felonies and most drug offenses with offices in the three counties, the Court of Common Pleas handles misdemeanors statewide and all felony preliminary hearings, and the Justice of the Peace Court takes certain misdemeanors and most motor vehicle cases.
• Do not expect a free statewide criminal docket. CourtConnect covers civil case information only, the criminal docket is available on free public access terminals in the courthouses of the three counties, and remote access is offered for the civil docket through File & Serve Express on subscription.
• Do not ask a courthouse terminal for a multi-court criminal history. Directive 2000-5 § I.F bars disclosure of records containing cumulative case-related information from more than one court, meaning the records obtained through DELJIS, and § I.M exempts expunged judicial records.
• Settle the licensing question before taking Delaware work. Section 1313(a) requires a license from the Professional Licensing Section to engage in the business of a private investigative agency, § 1313(b) requires fingerprints to the SBI, § 1311 requires a surety bond and liability insurance and § 1312 caps the fee at $600 per year, and no section of chapter 13 exempts a consumer reporting agency or an employment background screener.
• Scope a credit component to the right employer. The § 711(h) credit restriction binds public employers only; for a private employer, a Delaware credit check is governed by the federal FCRA alone, and 18 Del. C. § 8304 on the use of credit information is an insurance provision.
• Do not assume a Delaware salary threshold exists. None was located, and the rule turns on the character of the employer rather than on a headcount or a pay level.
• Know that the hiring conversation has two more state rules in it. Section 709B bars asking for compensation history, with penalties of $1,000–$5,000 and $5,000–$10,000, and § 709C requires pay-range posting from 26 September 2027 for employers above 25 employees.

Related states

• New Jersey. New Jersey bans the criminal record question only until the first interview and then permits both the question and the hiring decision, with no job-relatedness test and no private cause of action, and it preempts every municipal fair-chance ordinance except one governing a municipality’s own operations, so no city here adds a rule to check. Its consumer reporting statute is named for credit but reaches employment expressly, and it requires a disclosure of the precise nature and scope of the investigation plus separate written permission before an investigative report is ordered. Its two free Judiciary portals cover the indictable tier and neither reaches the municipal courts, where disorderly persons offenses are heard, while the one court channel licensed for commercial use meters at $4 per minute with downloads and screen-scraping expressly not supported, and the State Police repository is fingerprint based with a consumer reporting agency absent from its requester list.
• Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania limits how a conviction may be used rather than whether it may be asked about: 18 Pa.C.S. § 9125 lets an employer consider a felony or a misdemeanor conviction only to the extent it relates to the applicant’s suitability for the position applied for, and requires a written notice when a decision not to hire rests in whole or in part on criminal history record information, which the Third Circuit read in January 2026 to reach a conviction the applicant volunteered. The State Police repository answers against Pennsylvania law enforcement records only and never federal ones, a Pennsylvania court docket sits outside the state criminal history statute altogether, and the docket number that identifies a case carries a county code where a judicial district number would be expected. Philadelphia then bans the inquiry, reaching research conducted for an employer by a third party, and sets a seven-year felony and four-year misdemeanor window measured from the underlying arrest or release from incarceration, whichever is later, with ten business days to answer a provisional decision.
• Virginia. Virginia repealed its private-sector ban-the-box in 1985 and never replaced it, and it regulates the screening provider instead: a business screening service must register with the State Police to receive sealing notifications, must delete a sealed record regardless of the source it came from, must carry the record’s collection date on every dissemination, and is liable for $1,000 or actual damages. Its sealing sections moved to a new chapter on 1 July 2026 and its cannabis employer-disclosure ban was repealed the same day.

What we do

Delaware separates three questions that most coverage runs together. The ban-the-box is a public-employer rule with an interview trigger, and it covers credit history and credit score in the same subsection as the criminal record, which means a private employer here has no state inquiry rule and a public employer has two subjects to keep off the form. The cannabis protection that binds is the medical one: status as a cardholder and a positive test for components or metabolites are protected, and the adult-use chapter affirmatively disclaims any requirement or restriction on employers. The state criminal history is a fingerprint-based, fee-funded product of the State Bureau of Identification furnished on a discretionary "may", limited to conviction data, with onward dissemination prohibited and federal CHRI closed to private entities, and the courts are statewide courts whose free online docket is civil only and whose aggregate multi-court records may not be disclosed at the counter. Our Delaware work keeps the inquiry rule apart from the report, runs an expungement check before anything is reported, states whether a repository record or a court record answered the question, and checks the licensing question under Title 24 before Delaware work is quoted. If your current vendor describes Delaware as a ban-the-box state, or treats the state repository as a source it can order and resell, this is where that shows.

Sources

• Delaware Judiciary, Overview of the Delaware Courts, read live
• Delaware Superior Court, jurisdiction, "statewide original jurisdiction over criminal and civil cases"
• Delaware Judiciary, Civil Case Search, the docket page describing CourtConnect as civil case information
• Delaware Judiciary public-access document (document id=191608), public access terminals in the three counties and File & Serve Express for remote civil access
• Delaware Superior Court Administrative Directive No. 2000-5 (document id=36368), § I.F on cumulative multi-court criminal history records and § I.M on expunged judicial records
• 19 Del. C. § 711, unlawful employment practices, including the public-employer inquiry rule at (h) and the ability-test provision at (o), read in the authenticated Title 19 PDF
• 19 Del. C. § 710(21), the definition of "public employer", read in the authenticated Title 19 PDF
• 19 Del. C. §§ 709, 709A, 709B, 709C and § 731, reference immunity, social media, compensation history, pay-range posting and personnel files, read in the authenticated Title 19 PDF
• 11 Del. C. §§ 4372, 4373, 4373A and 4376, expungement, including the definition of "terminated in favor of the accused" and the non-disclosure and non-disclosure-request rules, read in the authenticated Title 11 PDF
• 11 Del. C. §§ 8501, 8502, 8506, 8513 and 8527, the State Bureau of Identification as central state repository, its completeness standard, employment furnishing and the prohibition on onward dissemination, read in the authenticated Title 11 PDF
• 16 Del. C. §§ 4905A and 4907A, the medical marijuana employment provisions, read in the authenticated Title 16 PDF
• 4 Del. C. §§ 1304 and 1307, the adult-use chapter's disclaimer as to employers and its preservation of private property rights, read in the authenticated Title 4 PDF
• 24 Del. C. chapter 13, the Private Investigators and Private Security Agencies Act, including the § 1302(17) definition, § 1311 to § 1313 licensing, bond and fee provisions and § 1316 and § 1319 qualifications, read in the authenticated Title 24 PDF
• 6 Del. C. chapter 22, "Credit and Identity Theft Protection", and chapter 12D, the Delaware Personal Data Privacy Act, read in the authenticated Title 6 PDF
• 18 Del. C. § 8304, "Use of credit information", an insurance provision, read in the authenticated Title 18 PDF
• 29 Del. C. chapter 90C, subchapter IV, the Delaware Artificial Intelligence (AI) Commission, expiring 17 July 2034, read in the authenticated Title 29 PDF
• Delaware Code full-text search, the searches run on 23 September 2026 that returned 0 results for "ban the box", "fair chance", "consumer report employment", "data broker", "brokering personal information", "automated employment decision", "automated decision system", "automated decision tool" and "predictive model"
• Delaware State Police, obtaining a certified criminal history, the $72.00 and $85.00 fees, the 27RVGT service code and the operator's statement on what that report will not do
• Enrolled House Bill No. 2, 84 Del. Laws, c. 24, read as a session law and searched in full for "employ" and "discriminat"
• Carney Executive Order 6, "Establishing a Uniform Statewide Anti-Discrimination Policy", read from the Delaware Public Archives
• Executive order list for the current Governor, retrieved through the governor's WordPress REST API
• Route note: every Delaware statute quotation on this page was read through the authenticated whole-Title PDFs served by delcode.delaware.gov, which is the publisher's own route and the fastest reliable one for a future update. The Code searches quoted were run against the Legislature's full-text endpoint on 23 September 2026. The Judiciary's overview, jurisdiction and docket pages were reachable live, and the State Police page was read directly. Wilmington's site returned HTTP 403 to every browser header set tried, including the browser user agent; Municode returned a JavaScript shell with 401 on its API paths; New Castle County's CivicClerk portal is a JavaScript shell whose /api/ paths 404; and the Legistar client named "wilmington" is Wilmington, North Carolina and was identified and excluded. Web archive routes were unavailable, by connection failure and then by HTTP 429. No Delaware case law or Attorney General opinion was read for this page.

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.