HI · state guide

Hawaii background screening law

How the courts here are organized

Hawaii runs one statewide court system divided into four judicial circuits, and the numbering is the first thing to get right. Section 603-1 provides: "The State is divided into four judicial circuits, as follows: (1) The first judicial circuit is the island of Oahu and all other islands belonging to the State not hereinafter mentioned; (2) The second judicial circuit includes the islands of Maui, Molokai, Lanai, Kahoolawe, and Molokini; (3) The third judicial circuit is the island of Hawaii; (4) The fifth judicial circuit includes the islands of Kauai and Niihau." There is no fourth circuit, and the Judiciary explains the gap in its own words: "The Fourth Circuit, which represented a portion of the island of Hawai`i, was eliminated in 1943 when it merged into the Third Circuit."

The circuit courts are the felony tier and they carry the jury trials. Section 603-21.5(a)(1) gives them jurisdiction over "Criminal offenses cognizable under the laws of the State, committed within their respective circuits or transferred to them for trial by change of venue from some other circuit court", and the Judiciary adds that "Jury trials are held in the Circuit Courts, which have general jurisdiction in civil and criminal cases. They also have exclusive jurisdiction in probate, guardianship and criminal felony cases, as well as civil cases where the contested amount exceeds $40,000."

The district courts are the misdemeanor tier and the ceiling is written as a punishment rather than as an offense class. Section 604-1 establishes a district court in each judicial circuit, and §604-8(a) limits their criminal jurisdiction to offenses "punishable by fine, or by imprisonment not exceeding one year whether with or without fine", adding that they "shall not have jurisdiction over any offense for which the accused cannot be held to answer unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury".

Two specialized courts exist without a courthouse of their own. The family courts hold "exclusive original jurisdiction" over children's cases under §571-11(1), and the Land Court and the Tax Appeal Court are not separate courthouses, because the Administrative Judge of the First Circuit assigns both. Above them sit the appellate courts, which the Judiciary describes as "the Hawai`i Supreme Court and the Intermediate Court of Appeals".

The public route to a case is eCourt Kokua, the Judiciary's public case-search portal, which the Judiciary describes as covering "public information from traffic cases, District Court and Circuit Court criminal, Family (Adult) Court criminal, District Court and Circuit Court civil, Family Court Civil, Land Court, Tax Appeal Court, and appellate cases." It is a search service rather than a records service, because certified copies still require paper at each courthouse. That is the routing conclusion for Hawaii: a court search is organized by circuit and by tier, and the number four is a count of circuits rather than a circuit number.

The repository answers on one side and is closed on the other, and the two sides rest on different footing. The Hawaii Criminal Justice Data Center, established by §846-2 as an agency of the Department of the Attorney General, states the open side in its own FAQ: "Can I do my own record checks? Yes. You can do name checks on the Adult Criminal Information Web Site at www.ecrim.ehawaii.gov. There is a $12.00 fee for each printed copy, and you must pay by credit card. You can also do name checks at Public Access Sites throughout the state. You need to have the person's name, social security number, sex, and date of birth. There is a $25.00 fee for each printed copy. ... You may also request the HCJDC staff to do the record check for you by completing a Form at the HCJDC, or writing in to us at: Hawaii Criminal Justice Data Center, 465 S. King Street, Room 102, Honolulu, HI 96813. There is a $30.00 fee for each request." There is no permissible-purpose gate in that answer, which is what makes a name-based Hawaii conviction check available to a consumer reporting agency.

The closed side is stated by the same agency. "Arrest records which have resulted in non-convictions or are still pending are considered confidential and are not available to the general public", and "Only criminal justice agencies and agencies authorized by Hawaii's laws, such as the Department of Human Services for their child care program, can access non-conviction information." The statutory channel matches that policy and is fingerprint-based: §846-2.7(a)(2) requires a state criminal history record check to "include nonconviction data", while §846-2.7(e) makes the information "available only to authorized entities, agencies, and qualified entities as described in subsections (b) and (c) and such other persons or agencies as the attorney general shall authorize". The section never mentions consumer reporting agencies, and a search of its text for "consumer reporting" returns nothing. The statutory definition is broad: §846-1 defines "Nonconviction data" as "arrest information without a disposition if an interval of one year has elapsed from the date of arrest and no active prosecution of the charge is pending; or information disclosing that the police have elected not to refer a matter to a prosecutor, or that a prosecutor has elected not to commence criminal proceedings, or that proceedings have been indefinitely postponed, as well as all acquittals and all dismissals."

The repository record is narrower than the state it is named for. The agency states that its criminal history information does not include other states' or federal records ("No. Only Hawaii arrests are included") and does not include juvenile records ("No. Only adult criminal history information is included, unless the juvenile case was transferred to the adult court"). A Hawaii repository answer is therefore Hawaii adult arrests and nothing else, which is a scope statement worth carrying in the file rather than assuming at the point a report is written.

What the repository does not carry is what the courts carry, and the court side has its own shape. There are four circuits, the fourth circuit does not exist, felony records sit in the circuit courts and misdemeanor records in the district courts, and eCourt Kokua publishes criminal, civil, family, traffic, Land Court, Tax Appeal Court and appellate cases from one place. Certified copies are not part of that service, because they require paper at each courthouse. A Hawaii answer therefore has to say whether a repository check or a court search answered the question, and on the court side it has to say which tier was covered.

Two operational questions about this state were not answered by the research behind the page, and they are named in the open items rather than guessed at. The first is whether the eCrim account terms impose a permissible-purpose certification that would exclude a consumer reporting agency in practice: the landing page is a login-and-cart page and its help panels are JavaScript-collapsed, so the account terms were not read, while the agency's own FAQ says plainly that anyone can do a name check. The second is what commercial court-record access costs and whether it needs a runner at each of the four courthouses; the Judiciary describes the public search service and the paper requirement for certified copies, and does not describe commercial terms.

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

What Hawaii law adds

Reporting limits at a glance

Every figure below is against Hawaii 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.

Hawaii adds nothing to that sequence for a criminal-history report, because it has no state consumer-reporting statute. Chapter 489P is a security freeze law, so there is no state pre-adverse action notice, no state adverse action notice, no state disclosure form and no state authorization rule to sit alongside the federal ones. Section 378-2.5 governs the timing of the inquiry and the reach of the consideration rather than the paperwork that follows a decision.

The state's leverage sits earlier, in the timing rule and the lookback, and between them they decide what may be considered at all. Section 378-2.5(b) permits inquiry and consideration only after a conditional offer, and §378-2.5(c) limits a conviction record to the most recent seven years for a felony and five for a misdemeanor, excluding periods of incarceration. A conviction outside that window is outside what the employer may consider, so a decision resting on one is exposed whatever the notice sequence said.

The documentary-evidence right is the step closest to a dispute, and it belongs before the decision rather than after it. Section 378-2.5(c) provides that where the person claims the period of incarceration was less than the record shows, "an employer shall provide the employee or prospective employee with an opportunity to present documentary evidence of a date of release to establish a period of incarceration that is shorter than the sentence imposed". Because the lookback clock excludes time in custody, the date of release fixes where the seven or five years begin, which makes the evidence the person brings a direct input into whether the record was reportable or usable in the first place.

An adverse decision that rests on non-conviction information carries state exposure that a federal analysis alone will not surface. Section 378-2(a)(1) makes "arrest and court record" a protected category, §378-1 defines that term to reach questioning, apprehension, custody, detention, investigation, a charge, a summons and an arrest with or without a warrant, and §378-2(a)(1)(C) makes it unlawful for an employer or an employment agency to make any inquiry in connection with prospective employment "that expresses, directly or indirectly, any limitation, specification, or discrimination". A letter that explains a decision by reference to an arrest that ended in no conviction is the kind of statement that provision reaches.

A credit component carries its own rule. Section 378-2(a)(8) bars an employer from refusing to hire, barring or discharging an individual, or otherwise discriminating in compensation or in the terms, conditions or privileges of employment, because of the individual's credit history or credit report "unless the information in the individual's credit history or credit report directly relates to a bona fide occupational qualification under section 378-3(2)". Where credit information contributes to a decision, the file has to be able to state the qualification, because the BFOQ test is the only carve-out in the subsection.

Scope is worth a sentence in the file as well. A Hawaii repository check is a name-based adult arrest record drawn from Hawaii sources only, with no other states' records, no federal records and no juvenile records unless the case was transferred to the adult court, and non-conviction data is not available from that channel at all. A record of what the source actually covered is the honest basis for any letter that cites it.

Screening in Hawaii: what your process needs

• Do not inquire about or consider a conviction record before a conditional offer. Section 378-2.5(b) sets the trigger at the offer, not the application and not the first interview, and subsection (a) applies the rational-relationship test to consideration as well as to inquiry.
• Do not look for a size threshold. Section 378-1 sets the employer definition at "one or more employees", the State and its political subdivisions are inside it, and the only exclusion is the United States.
• Apply the lookback as a limit on consideration and not only on receipt. Section 378-2.5(c) allows an employer to consider a conviction record within the most recent seven years for a felony and five for a misdemeanor, excluding periods of incarceration.
• Build a route for the documentary-evidence right before a decision is made. Where a person claims the period of incarceration was shorter than the record shows, §378-2.5(c) requires the employer to provide an opportunity to present documentary evidence of a date of release, and the date of release is what fixes where the seven or five years begin.
• Do not treat the nineteen exceptions as the whole of the exception. Section 378-2.5(d) is introduced by the word "including:" and the operative test is an employer "expressly permitted to inquire into an individual's criminal history for employment purposes pursuant to any federal or state law other than subsection (a)", so the exempt set is open-ended.
• Check whether the position is a listed category before relying on an exception at all. Armed security services, detective and security guard agencies, private schools, federally insured financial institutions, insurance employers, aviation and airport screeners, developmental disabilities domiciliary home providers, cooperative housing corporation boards, and condominium association boards with their managing agents and resident managers are inside the list, and the public-sector entries are inside it too.
• For a public-sector client, check which carve-out applies before describing the process as bound by the conditional-offer rule. The State and its political subdivisions are inside the employer definition, and items (1) to (5), (13), (14), (15), (17) and (19) of §378-2.5(d) take a long list of public bodies out of both the timing rule and the lookback caps.
• Treat "arrest and court record" as a protected category and read it broadly. Section 378-1 reaches questioning, apprehension, custody, detention, being held for investigation, a charge, a summons, an arrest with or without a warrant, a trial and a conviction, and §378-2(a)(1)(C) bars any inquiry that expresses a limitation or specification, directly or indirectly.
• Do not report or consider a chapter 571-84 confidential family court judgment. Section 378-2.5(c) excludes "final judgments required to be confidential pursuant to section 571-84" from the definition of conviction.
• Run a credit component only against a stated bona fide occupational qualification. Section 378-2(a)(8) permits credit history or a credit report to be used only where the information directly relates to a BFOQ under §378-3(2), and the subsection carries no industry exception list.
• Do not assume a state notice or authorization requirement exists. Hawaii has no mini-FCRA, so there is no state pre-adverse action notice, no state adverse action notice, no state disclosure form and no state authorization rule for a criminal-history report.
• Do not plan a non-conviction product out of the state channel. HCJDC name checks answer convictions, and non-conviction data is confidential: the agency says only criminal justice agencies and agencies authorized by Hawaii law can access it, and §846-2.7 does not name consumer reporting agencies among its recipients.
• Record the scope of a repository answer in the file. HCJDC records are Hawaii adult arrests only, with no other states' records, no federal records and no juvenile records unless the case was transferred to the adult court.
• Do not search for a fourth circuit and do not treat a circuit number as a county. There are four circuits, felony records sit in the circuit courts, misdemeanor records in the district courts, family court matters in their own court, and certified copies require paper at each courthouse even though eCourt Kokua publishes the case.
• Do not assume an accommodation duty for a registered medical cannabis patient. Section 329-122(e)(2)(B) provides that the medical-use authorization "shall not apply to" use "In the workplace of one's employment", and the protections afforded to a qualifying patient at §329-125(a) are a criminal affirmative defense.
• Two prohibitions sit outside the screening sequence and are worth knowing if the onboarding or monitoring process touches them. Section 378-26.5 bars requiring a lie detector test as a condition of employment or continued employment and bars discrimination against anyone who refuses one, and §378-102 bars requiring an employee to download a location-tracking or personal-information-revealing application to a personal communication device and bars retaliation for a refusal.
• If the business also operates as an employment agency for Hawaii positions, read Part I as applying to it directly. Section 378-2(a)(1)(B) and (C) reach an employment agency's referral practice and its inquiries, not only an employer's.
• Check the AI question again before relying on the negative. No Hawaii statute regulating automated employment decisions was located, but the finding rests on the chapter-level table of contents and on full reads of §§378-2, 378-2.5, 378-3, 378-101 and 378-102, and not on a full read of every employment-adjacent chapter.

Related states

• California. California 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.
• Oregon. Oregon releases criminal history to employers and screening firms only through a name-based search that the state police must label as unconfirmed, so the match rests on similarity of names and description rather than on fingerprints, the answer covers Oregon alone, and it returns every conviction with no time limit plus arrests less than a year old that ended in no acquittal or dismissal. Every request is disclosed to the person it is about before anything is released, and the department delivers fourteen days after sending that notice.
• Washington. Washington 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.

What we do

Our Hawaii work starts from the event the statute waits for. Section 378-2.5 permits an employer to inquire about and to consider a conviction record only after a conditional offer, from one employee up, with a lookback of seven years for a felony and five for a misdemeanor that excludes periods of incarceration and hands the person a right to document a shorter period from a date of release. We read the exception list as what it is, nineteen named categories introduced by the word "including:" over an open-ended test, so an employer that treats the list as closed is assuming more than the statute says. On the record side we keep the two channels apart: the Hawaii Criminal Justice Data Center sells name-based adult conviction checks to anyone who pays and holds non-conviction data confidential, and the courts run on four circuits with no fourth circuit, with eCourt Kokua publishing the case and certified copies still paper at each courthouse. If your current process asks the question on the application rather than after the offer, or passes on a conviction the seven-year clock has already passed, this is where that shows.

Sources

• Haw. Rev. Stat. §378-2.5, employer inquiries into conviction record, read 2026-09-23
• Haw. Rev. Stat. §378-1, definitions, including "Employer" and "Arrest and court record"
• Haw. Rev. Stat. §378-2, unlawful discriminatory practices, including the arrest and court record category at (a)(1) and the credit prohibition at (a)(8)
• Haw. Rev. Stat. §378-3, exceptions, including the bona fide occupational qualification test at (2)
• Haw. Rev. Stat. §378-26.5, lie detector tests, and §378-27, exceptions
• Haw. Rev. Stat. §378-102, mobile applications, Part VIII of chapter 378
• Haw. Rev. Stat. ch. 489P, Consumer Credit Reporting Agencies, §§489P-1 to 489P-6, the security freeze law, read 2026-09-23
• Haw. Rev. Stat. §329-122, medical use of cannabis, including the workplace carve-out at (e)(2)(B), and §329-125, protections afforded to a qualifying patient
• Haw. Rev. Stat. §§846-1, 846-2, 846-3 and 846-2.7, the Hawaii Criminal Justice Data Center, nonconviction data and criminal history record checks
• Haw. Rev. Stat. §§603-1, 603-21.5, 604-1, 604-8, 571-11 and 571-84, judicial circuits, criminal jurisdiction and the family courts
• Hawaii Criminal Justice Data Center, Criminal history frequently asked questions, read 2026-09-23
• Hawaii Criminal Justice Data Center, Department of the Attorney General
• eCrim, the Adult Criminal Information Web Site
• Hawaii State Judiciary, Court structure, read 2026-09-23
• Hawaii State Judiciary, Circuit courts, read 2026-09-23
• Hawaii State Judiciary, Search court records, read 2026-09-23
• Hawaii Revised Statutes table of contents, the chapter listing used for the automated-decision finding
• Route note: capitol.hawaii.gov returns HTTP 403 with a Cloudflare "Attention Required" page on every path, including PDFs, even with a full browser header set, so every statute above was read through the r.jina.ai reader proxy at the same URL. Directory listings were blocked by the WAF even through the proxy, so section URLs were constructed from the official volume map, and the URL pattern our file carried (Vol08_Ch0371-0399) served the HRS's own 404 template at HTTP 200 and was corrected to Vol07_Ch0346-0398. The alphabetical HRS index PDF at /docs/hrs_index.pdf was hard-blocked with a 783-byte block page and was not worked around, which is why the automated-decision and cannabis negatives are chapter-level and section-by-section rather than index-wide. law.justia.com, codes.findlaw.com and lawserver.com were all unusable, web.archive.org refused connections intermittently, and the search engines available from that environment returned empty shells, so every finding comes from direct URL navigation. The HCJDC FAQ and the Judiciary's informational pages were readable and are quoted as the agencies' own words.

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.