FL · state guide

Florida background screening law

How the courts here are organized

Florida has four court tiers and the constitution closes the list. Article V, § 1 provides that "The judicial power shall be vested in a supreme court, district courts of appeal, circuit courts and county courts. No other courts may be established by the state, any political subdivision or any municipality." The legislature divides the state "into appellate court districts and judicial circuits following county lines", and it has done so twice over: § 26.021 opens "The state is divided into 20 judicial circuits" and then names the counties of each, and § 35.01 provides that "Six district courts of appeal are created, and the state is divided into six appellate districts of contiguous circuits."

The circuit court is the felony court. Section 26.012(2)(d) gives the circuit courts exclusive original jurisdiction "Of all felonies and of all misdemeanors arising out of the same circumstances as a felony which is also charged", and § 26.012(5) states plainly that "A circuit court is a trial court." A misdemeanor that arises out of the same circumstances as a charged felony is therefore circuit court business too, which is the exception that catches a charge a client will often describe as a misdemeanor.

The county court is the misdemeanor court and it still exists. The constitution puts it beyond argument at Article V, § 6(a): "There shall be a county court in each county. There shall be one or more judges for each county court as prescribed by general law." Paragraph (b) then provides that "The county courts shall exercise the jurisdiction prescribed by general law. Such jurisdiction shall be uniform throughout the state." The statute fills that in at § 34.01(1): the county courts have original jurisdiction "In all misdemeanor cases not cognizable by the circuit courts", "Of all violations of municipal and county ordinances", and of civil actions within the money limit, which has been $50,000 for actions filed on or after 1 January 2023. The live question about whether Florida still has county courts is answered in the affirmative by the constitution and by § 34.01.

Appeals go to one of six district courts of appeal. Section 35.01 creates six, and the statutory scheme has been extended rather than merely renumbered: § 35.042 covers the Fourth District, § 35.043 the Fifth District and § 35.044 the Sixth District, which chapter 2022-163 added. Article V, § 4(b)(1) gives the district courts jurisdiction over appeals "that may be taken as a matter of right, from final judgments or orders of trial courts ... not directly appealable to the supreme court or a circuit court".

The practical consequence is that a Florida search has two trial tiers per county and 67 counties to cross. Felony dispositions sit in the circuit court, misdemeanor and ordinance dispositions sit in the county court, and § 435.04(1)(a) makes "local criminal records checks through local law enforcement agencies" part of the Level 2 standard Florida sets for itself. A state-level repository check answers a state-level question, and the reach of that answer is limited by what enters the repository under § 943.051(2) and by what the county courts disposed of.

The repository is a statutory one and its completeness is partly a rulemaking question. Section 943.051(1)(a) gives the Criminal Justice Information Program the duty to "Collect, process, store, maintain, and disseminate criminal justice information and records necessary to the operation of the criminal justice information system of the department", and § 943.051(2) provides that the prints of "each adult person charged with or convicted of a felony, misdemeanor, or violation of a comparable ordinance" shall be captured and submitted, then adds: "Exceptions to this requirement for specified misdemeanors or comparable ordinance violations may be made by the department by rule." Which misdemeanors never enter the state repository is therefore set by rule rather than by statute. The rule adopted under that authority is 11C-4.003, Arrest Fingerprint Card Submission, whose rulemaking authority is recorded as §§ 943.03(4), 943.05(2)(d) and 943.051(2). The list of exempted misdemeanors sits in that rule rather than in the statute, and it is not reproduced here.

A statutory check in Florida is a first-party transaction with the state. Section 943.053(3)(a) provides that, after supplying all known personal identifying information, "persons in the private sector and noncriminal justice agencies may be provided criminal history information upon tender of fees as established in this subsection and in the manner prescribed by rule of the Department of Law Enforcement." Section 943.053(3)(d) adds that "The fee for access to criminal history information by the private sector or a noncriminal justice agency shall be assessed without regard to the size or category of criminal history record information requested", and (3)(e) sets that fee at "$24 per name submitted", with lower figures for the Statewide Guardian ad Litem Office and certain departmental vendors, for Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services application processing, and for the volunteer names submitted under § 943.0542. Nothing may be substituted for the department's own product when the check is mandated, which is the rule at § 943.053(12).

The local tier is inside the state's own standard and outside any state file. Section 435.04(1)(a) requires Level 2 screening to include "local criminal records checks through local law enforcement agencies", and § 435.03(1) permits a Level 1 check to "include local criminal records checks through local law enforcement agencies". There is no statewide criminal case search published for the public. Court business is organized by circuit and by county, the 20 circuits and 67 counties are fixed by § 26.021, and the service that carries the Florida name, MyFloridaCourtAccess, is the Florida Courts E-Filing Portal, which describes itself as "a single, statewide access point connecting thousands of users to Florida’s court system" and is a filing service rather than a criminal records search. The authority that owns it is described on the same page as "an intergovernmental body comprised of the 67 elected Clerks of the Circuit and County Court and the Clerk of the Supreme Court representing Florida’s Appellate Courts", which is the county-level structure that holds the records. A Florida check that reports only a state repository result has answered the narrowest of the three questions chapter 435 asks.

A sealed record still reaches a listed set of employers, and the list is where the drafting wobbles. Section 943.059(6)(a) makes a sealed record "available only to" the subject, the subject's attorney, criminal justice agencies for their criminal justice purposes, judges for case-related decisionmaking, and, at subparagraph 5., "To those entities set forth in subparagraphs (b)1., 4.-6., and 8.-10. for their respective licensing access authorization and employment purposes." Paragraph (6)(d) then describes the disclosure duty by reference to "subparagraphs (b)1., 4.-6., and 8.-11." The same subsection points at two different ranges of its own subparagraph list. The page records the discrepancy rather than picking a reading, because a screening product that has to decide whether a given Florida employer can see a sealed record is deciding inside an ambiguity the statute has not resolved.

Whether the person may deny the record is a separate question from whether the employer may see it, and the statute answers both. Section 943.059(6)(b) and § 943.0585(6)(b) both provide that the subject "may lawfully deny or fail to acknowledge the arrests covered by the sealed record" or the expunged record, and both then list the exceptions, which include being "a candidate for employment with a criminal justice agency", seeking admission to The Florida Bar, and seeking to be employed or licensed by or to contract with the Department of Children and Families, the Agency for Health Care Administration, the Department of Health, the Department of Education, a district unit, a charter school or a private or parochial school, among others. A Florida report that shows a sealed or expunged matter is therefore only actionable in an employer's hands if that employer is inside the list.

The routing conclusion is that a Florida answer has to say which tier answered. A state repository result is a fingerprint-supported Florida criminal history from the department, obtained per request under § 943.053(12), and it does not carry what never entered the repository under the § 943.051(2) exceptions. A court result is a circuit court matter for a felony and a county court matter for a misdemeanor or an ordinance violation, in one of 67 counties. A national result comes through the department under the same subsection unless federal law requires otherwise. None of the three is a Florida criminal history on its own, and § 435.04(1)(a) is the provision that requires two of them together.

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

What Florida law adds

Reporting limits at a glance

Every figure below is against Florida 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’s details and a dispute route. The FCRA article sets it out in full.

Florida adds a written notice duty that names the record. Section 435.06(1) provides that where an employer or agency "has reasonable cause to believe that grounds exist for the denial or termination of employment of any employee as a result of background screening, it shall notify the employee in writing, stating the specific record that indicates noncompliance with the standards in this chapter." The same subsection then closes the dispute route to one ground: "It is the responsibility of the affected employee to contest his or her disqualification or to request exemption from disqualification. The only basis for contesting the disqualification is proof of mistaken identity." A Florida letter that invites a factual dispute about the offense itself is offering a remedy the chapter does not provide.

The exemption runs on its own track and on its own clock, and it is not a dispute. Section 435.07 places the application with the head of the appropriate agency or qualified entity, puts the burden on the employee at the clear and convincing standard, requires any court-ordered amount to be paid in full first, and sets waiting periods of two years for a felony and three for an offense that would be a felony if committed by an adult. Section 435.07(4)(a) then removes pardon, executive clemency and restoration of civil rights as grounds. A file that treats a pardon as having cleared the disqualification is relying on something the section expressly excludes.

The termination decision carries a statutory shield, and it is worth stating precisely. Section 435.06(4) provides that "There is no reemployment assistance or other monetary liability on the part of, and no cause of action for damages against, an employer that, upon notice of a conviction or arrest for a disqualifying offense listed under this chapter, terminates the person against whom the report was issued or who was arrested, regardless of whether or not that person has filed for an exemption pursuant to this chapter." Paragraph (2)(b) goes further in the other direction and requires removal from contact with vulnerable persons on learning of an arrest for a disqualifying offense, until the arrest is resolved.

What is in the report decides whether the letter can rely on it. Section 943.053(12) bars substituting another governmental entity's or a private entity's information for the department's own product when the check is mandated, and it excludes prints taken by the subject. A Florida letter that rests on a criminal history obtained from an aggregated database, or on a record the department did not provide for that request, is resting on something the sourcing rule did not authorize, and the same rule decides the date on which the check has to have been run.

Outside chapter 435, Florida imposes no adverse-action duty for a criminal history report, no lookback rule and no pre-request notice. The procedural overlay is the federal one, and the state overlay is the written notice and single contest ground at § 435.06(1), the removal and termination duties at § 435.06(2), and the sourcing rule at § 943.053(12). Where a credit component runs, no state notice or fee condition was located either, because the credit-reporting machinery is federal and § 501.005 exempts employment-screening files.

Screening in Florida: what your process needs

• Establish first whether the role is one for which screening "is required by law to be conducted" under § 435.01(1)(a). Chapter 435 supplies the standard, the disqualifying list and the consequences only where a check is mandated, and no Florida statute governs the criminal history question for an employer outside that condition.
• Decide which standard the role carries. Level 1 under § 435.03 is a statewide criminal correspondence check plus a Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Public Website check, with local criminal records checks optional. Level 2 under § 435.04 is a fingerprint check through the FDLE and the FBI, plus local criminal records checks, plus a five-year multi-state sexual predator and offender registry search.
• Do not substitute anything for the department's own product where the check is mandated. Section 943.053(12) requires the mandated check to include a Florida criminal history provided by the department, permits a vendor to supply it "only if that information is directly obtained from the department for each request", and bars substitution of information "provided by any other governmental entity of this state or any private entity".
• Take fingerprints only from a permissible source. Section 943.053(12) allows a law enforcement agency employee, a government agency employee, a qualified electronic fingerprint service provider or a private employer, and provides that prints taken by the subject "may not be accepted or used for the purpose of identification". Level 2 prints must be submitted electronically under § 435.04(1)(b).
• Read the disqualifying list before writing a policy, and read it as a list of arrests as well as convictions. Section 435.04(2) runs from paragraph (a) to paragraph (zz) and disqualifies a person who has "been arrested for and are awaiting final disposition of" any listed offense. Section 435.03(3) adds a separate domestic violence bar that applies wherever the act was committed.
• Build the removal step into the process. Section 435.06(2)(b) requires an employer that "becomes aware that an employee has been arrested for a disqualifying offense" to remove the employee from contact with any vulnerable person until the arrest is resolved, and (2)(c) requires termination or reassignment for an employee found to be in noncompliance unless an exemption has been granted.
• Keep pre-screening contact to training and orientation. Section 435.06(2)(d) permits hiring into a screened position before the process finishes for training and orientation purposes, but the employee "may not have direct contact with vulnerable persons until the screening process is completed".
• Give the written notice with the specific record, and do not offer a contest the statute does not allow. Section 435.06(1) requires written notice "stating the specific record that indicates noncompliance with the standards in this chapter", and confines the contest to "proof of mistaken identity", with the exemption request as the other route.
• Route an exemption application to the agency or qualified entity, not to the employer, and brief the applicant on the standard. Section 435.07(3)(a) puts the burden of clear and convincing evidence of rehabilitation on the applicant, and § 435.07(1)(b) requires any court-ordered amount to be paid in full first.
• Do not treat a pardon, executive clemency or restoration of civil rights as clearing a chapter 435 disqualification. Section 435.07(4)(a) provides that it does not, and § 435.07(4)(b) adds that disqualification may not be removed from a designated sexual predator, a career offender or a registered sexual offender, subject to § 943.04354.
• Check sealed and expunged records before relying on them. Section 943.0595(2)(a) seals non-convictions automatically, § 943.059(6)(b) and § 943.0585(6)(b) let the subject deny the record, and access is confined to the entities listed in § 943.059(6)(a)5. and the parallel provision for expunctions, whose two cross-references do not agree with each other.
• Where the employer is a public body, apply § 112.011 to the decision rather than to the question. Denial is permitted for a felony or first-degree misdemeanor "directly related to the position of employment sought", a lack of civil rights is not a permissible sole ground under (1)(c), and law enforcement, firefighting and public-safety-critical hiring are outside the section under (2).
• For a state agency role, check § 775.16 first. A felony conviction for sale of or trafficking in a controlled substance, or conspiracy to do so, disqualifies the person from applying for state employment and for a state license, permit or certificate until sentence completion or the treatment and testing conditions are met, and § 112.011(1)(a) defers to it.
• Run the employment eligibility step separately from the criminal history step. Section 448.095(2)(a) requires verification within three business days of the first day of paid work, (2)(b)2. requires a private employer with 25 or more employees to use E-Verify, and (2)(b)3. requires certification of compliance on the first return each calendar year.
• Do not expect a security freeze to hold up a background check. Section 501.005(12)(j) exempts a consumer reporting agency database or file that consists entirely of criminal record information, employment screening, tenant screening, personal loss history or fraud prevention from the freeze, and § 501.005(13)(a) removes any fee for placing, removing or lifting one.
• Do not promise a client protection the state does not provide. No private-sector ban-the-box, no lookback rule, no salary-history prohibition and no credit-check restriction were located in the Florida instruments read in full, and no Florida statute regulates automated hiring decisions.

Related states

• Georgia. Georgia’s First Offender Act says a discharge is not a conviction and "shall not be used to disqualify an individual in any application for employment or appointment to office in either the public or private sector", and the section opens by excepting Code Section 42-8-63.1: a discharge can still disqualify applicants to schools, child welfare agencies, child and after-school care, long-term care, day care for elderly persons and facilities for people who are mentally ill or developmentally disabled, on one offense list for discharges before 1 July 2016 and a different one after, and any discharge involving a felony or a crime involving moral turpitude can bar a peace officer certification. The superior court is the felony tier in circuits carrying all 159 counties, and a magistrate court sits in every one of them.
• Louisiana. Louisiana bars a private employer from requesting or considering an arrest or charge that did not result in a conviction, with no age limit on the bar and no salary exemption attached to it, and it gives the applicant a right on written request to the background check information that was used. Its felony line turns on whether an offense carries death or imprisonment at hard labor rather than on a maximum sentence, and the section creating its judicial districts states that there are forty-one and then creates a forty-second in the same text.
• Texas. Texas named hiring practices as a field its cities may not regulate, which voids Austin’s private-employer fair-chance ordinance under the text of that provision, and it makes its own criminal history confidential by statute so access runs through a subscription clearinghouse rather than the state.

What we do

Florida does not regulate hiring; it regulates screening that the law requires. Chapter 435 applies where a background screening "is required by law to be conducted", and where it applies it sets the standard: Level 1 at § 435.03 is a statewide criminal correspondence check plus a national sex offender public website check, and Level 2 at § 435.04 is a fingerprint check through the FDLE and the FBI plus local criminal records checks and a five-year multi-state registry search. The disqualifying list runs from paragraph (a) to paragraph (zz), it reaches a person who has "been arrested for and are awaiting final disposition of" a listed offense, the only ground for contesting it is proof of mistaken identity at § 435.06(1), and § 435.07(4)(a) provides that a pardon, executive clemency or restoration of civil rights cannot lift it. Where the check is mandated, § 943.053(12) requires a Florida criminal history provided by the department, obtained directly from the department for each request, with no substitution of another government's or any private entity's information, and it excludes prints taken by the subject. Non-convictions seal automatically under § 943.0595 with no limit on the number of times, and § 943.059(6)(b) lets the person deny the record except in a listed set of contexts. On the court side there are two trial tiers in each of 67 counties, 20 circuits and six district courts of appeal, and no statewide criminal case search. Our Florida work keeps the three questions apart: which standard applies, whether the record came from the department for that request, and whether the county tier was reached. If your current vendor answers Florida with an aggregated state record, this is where that shows.

Sources

• Fla. Stat. ch. 435, Employment Screening, read in full as one document, including §§ 435.01, 435.03, 435.04, 435.06, 435.07 and 435.12
• Fla. Stat. § 943.053, Dissemination of criminal justice information; fees, including the direct-from-FDLE rule at (12) and the fee provisions at (3)(d) and (3)(e)
• Fla. Stat. § 943.051, Criminal justice information; collection and storage; fingerprinting, including the repository duty at (1) and the misdemeanor exception at (2)
• Fla. Stat. § 943.0595, Automatic sealing of criminal history records; confidentiality of related court records
• Fla. Stat. § 943.059, Court-ordered sealing of criminal history records, including the effect of an order at (6)
• Fla. Stat. § 943.0585, Court-ordered expunction of criminal history records, including the effect of an order at (6)
• Fla. Stat. § 943.0581, Administrative expunction for arrests made contrary to law or by mistake
• Fla. Stat. § 112.011, Disqualification from licensing and public employment based on criminal conviction, and § 112.0111, Restrictions on the employment of ex-offenders
• Fla. Stat. § 775.16, Drug offenses; additional penalties, the disqualification from state employment and state licensure
• Fla. Stat. § 768.095, Employer immunity from liability; disclosure of information regarding former or current employees
• Fla. Stat. § 448.095, Employment eligibility, the E-Verify requirement and the annual certification
• Fla. Stat. § 501.005, Consumer report security freeze, including the screening-database exemption at (12)(j), and § 501.0051, Protected consumer report security freeze, with the parallel exemption at (8)(g)
• Fla. Stat. ch. 501 Part V, Data Privacy and Security (ss. 501.701-501.722), the Florida Digital Bill of Rights: § 501.701 short title, § 501.702 definitions, § 501.704 exemptions, including the Fair Credit Reporting Act carve-out at (12) and the employment-context exemption at (16)
• Fla. Stat. § 817.7001, Credit service organizations; definitions, including the consumer reporting agency carve-out at (2)(b)9.
• Fla. Stat. § 26.021, Judicial circuits; judges, naming all 67 counties across 20 circuits
• Fla. Stat. § 26.012, Jurisdiction of circuit court, and § 34.01, Jurisdiction of county court
• Fla. Stat. § 35.01, District courts of appeal; districts, creating six districts
• Fla. Const. art. V, §§ 1, 4, 5 and 6, on the courts, the district courts of appeal, the circuit courts and the county courts, and art. X, § 29, medical marijuana
• Fla. Admin. Code r. 11C-4.003, Arrest Fingerprint Card Submission, recorded with rulemaking authority including § 943.051(2), effective 29 May 2014, and rules 11C-6.004, 11C-6.010 and 11C-7.006 to 11C-7.013
• Florida Courts E-Filing Portal, published at MyFloridaCourtAccess, read for what the service is and who governs it: a filing access point owned by an intergovernmental body comprised of the 67 elected clerks
• Route note: leg.state.fl.us is reachable directly and every Florida Statutes and constitutional quotation on this page was read live from it on 23 September 2026. fdle.state.fl.us returns no response at all to a direct request and was read through the r.jina.ai reader proxy. flrules.org answers a request that carries no browser User-Agent with an HTTP 403 and was read through the same proxy, which gave the rule numbers, the effective dates and the rulemaking authority, but not the rule text, because the rule itself is published as a Word file. The municipal codes of Broward County, Tallahassee, Orange County and Gainesville were read through the proxy and contain no criminal-history hiring provision; the tables of contents for Miami-Dade County, Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville, Fort Lauderdale, Hialeah, West Palm Beach, Palm Beach County, Hillsborough County, Pinellas County, Boca Raton, Clearwater and Miramar did not render through it. No case-law source is reachable, so no Florida decision was read.

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.