IA · state guide

Iowa background screening law

How the courts here are organized

Iowa has a single unified trial court and no county court, and that is the fact that decides how a search here is scoped. Section 602.6101 provides: "A unified trial court is established. This court is the 'Iowa District Court'. The district court has exclusive, general, and original jurisdiction of all actions, proceedings, and remedies, civil, criminal, probate, and juvenile, except in cases where exclusive or concurrent jurisdiction is conferred upon some other court, tribunal, or administrative body. The district court has all the power usually possessed and exercised by trial courts of general jurisdiction, and is a court of record." Section 602.6104(1) then vests that jurisdiction in "district judges, district associate judges, associate juvenile judges, associate probate judges, and magistrates". A county-by-county court run is therefore the wrong model here, not because the counties are irrelevant but because they are filing addresses inside one court.

The state is divided into eight judicial districts, and the statute no longer says so. The current § 602.6107 does not enumerate them; subsection (3) provides that "The composition of the judicial districts in section 602.6107, Code 2003, and judicial election districts in section 602.6109, Code 2003, shall remain in effect until a new division of the state into judicial districts and judicial election districts is enacted", and subsections (1) and (2) require the supreme court to review the division at least every ten years beginning 1 January 2012 and to submit a reorganisation plan to the general assembly by 15 November. The Judicial Branch's own pages supply the present division: eight judicial districts, each listing its counties, each with a chief judge and a district court administrator. Summing those eight lists gives 100 county entries for 99 counties, because District 8 lists "Lee North" and "Lee South" as separate entries, which is Lee County's two-courthouse arrangement appearing in the court's own structure.

The venue rule is continuous session in every county of the district. Section 602.6103 provides that "The district court of each judicial district shall be in continuous session for all of the several counties comprising the district", and Iowa Court Rules rule 16.503 requires the Judicial Branch to "maintain at least one public access terminal in each county courthouse and in the Judicial Branch Building". The practical result is that a criminal case is filed in a county and heard by a district court that sits in every county of its district, so the county determines where the file is kept and the district determines who supervises it.

The bench is capped by statute and layered by office. Section 602.6201(10) provides that "the number of district judges shall not exceed one hundred sixteen during the period commencing July 1, 1999". Below the district judges sit two offices that do most of the criminal work. Section 602.6306(2) gives district associate judges the jurisdiction of magistrates plus civil money judgments up to $10,000, involuntary commitment proceedings under chapters 125 and 229, "jurisdiction of indictable misdemeanors, class 'D' felony violations, and other felony arraignments", temporary and emergency protective orders under chapter 235F or 236, probate orders not requiring notice and hearing, and juvenile court jurisdiction when designated. Section 602.6405(1) gives magistrates "jurisdiction of simple misdemeanors regardless of the amount of the fine, including traffic and ordinance violations, and preliminary hearings, search warrant proceedings, county and municipal infractions, and small claims", together with the power to hear complaints, issue warrants, order arrests, make commitments and take bail.

The consequence for a records search is that the tier matters more than the county. A felony is charged and disposed of in the district court, and its arraignment may be handled by a district associate judge. An indictable misdemeanor is within the district associate judges' jurisdiction. A simple misdemeanor, which is where the bulk of the ordinary docket sits, is decided by a magistrate, and § 602.6405(4) requires magistrate trials and contested hearings to be electronically recorded unless a party supplies a certified court reporter at their own expense, with the recording kept "for one year after entry of a final judgment in the trial court or until thirty days after final disposition, whichever is later". A request that names only "district court" will in practice cover the felony tier, because that is the phrase people use, and it should be understood to cover all three offices, because they sit inside the one court.

Record access is governed by rule rather than by statute, and the rule is that filings are public. Iowa Court Rules chapter 16, the Iowa Rules of Electronic Procedure, Division V provides at rule 16.501 that "All filings in the Iowa court system are public unless system restricted or filed with restricted access. Electronic filing does not affect public access to court files." The limit is on how the public reaches them rather than on whether they may be read: rule 16.502(4) provides that members of the general public "may view electronic documents in public cases at public access terminals in the county courthouse in which the case is pending", while remote access belongs to registered filers, to abstractors, and to self-represented litigants and parties as to their own cases only. Rule 16.504 lets the Judicial Branch fulfill requests for public electronic documents across more than a single case at its discretion and subject to the state court administrator, and rule 16.601(1)(b) states that the clerk "will not review filings to determine whether appropriate omissions or redactions have been made".

The repository is a name and date of birth file rather than a fingerprint file, and the agency says so. The Division of Criminal Investigation accepts requests by mail, fax, in person, email or through its online portal, and not by telephone, and requires at minimum a first name, a last name and an exact date of birth, with gender, Social Security number and middle name not required. The fee is $15 per last name, with a separate form and payment for each last name. Turnaround is stated as "generally, record checks are processed and returned between two to five business days from receipt in our office". That is a cheaper and faster route than a court-by-court search, and the page treats it as the primary Iowa route rather than as an alternative to one.

What the repository will not give up without a signed release is the operational center of the page. The Division states it in a single passage: "Iowa law does not require a release authorization to request a criminal history record check on another person. If a signed release is not provided, the following information cannot be released: completed deferred judgments to non-law enforcement agencies. Arrests over 18 months old without a final disposition." The statutory basis is § 692.2(1)(b)(3) and (1)(b)(4). A screening process can therefore order an Iowa DCI check with no release and receive a usable conviction record, and the two categories it will not receive are the two an applicant most often wants gone.

A deferred judgment sits in two places after discharge, and the DCI has stated how it handles its copy. "A completed deferred judgment is only expunged at the court level. A completed deferred judgment will stay on a person's record with the DCI. Our records will be updated to reflect the subject has been 'discharged' from the deferred judgment when we receive notification from the courts the requirements of the deferred judgment have been completed. This is considered a non-conviction. A discharged deferred judgment will only be released with a signed release authorization from the subject of the request." So the court file is expunged and the DCI file is not; the DCI file records a discharge rather than a conviction; and the release is the only thing that opens it. That is a distinction worth holding on to, because a report that shows a discharged deferred judgment with no release behind it has disclosed something the Division says it should not have.

Juvenile records are closed in a way a release does not fix. The Division states that "most juvenile records are confidential. Confidential juvenile court records cannot be included in Iowa criminal history results. A signed release authorization is not sufficient to obtain this information." Section 692.2(1)(b)(7) is the statutory basis for withholding adjudication and custody data made confidential under §§ 232.147, 232.149 or 232.149A, or sealed under § 232.150, except as needed to administer chapter 692A. The agency also explains its own negative result honestly: a "No Iowa Criminal History Found" response may mean that there is no record, or that the information "is not releasable per Iowa law without a signed release authorization", or that there is juvenile information not releasable under Iowa Code 232.147. A clean Iowa result is therefore not the same as a clean record, and the page says so.

The repository deletes material on its own schedule, which is a limit on what a search can find rather than on what an employer may use. Section 692.16 requires Iowa arrests four years old with no disposition data to be removed, two years for juveniles, on an annual review. Section 692.17(1) provides that criminal history data in a computer data storage system "shall not include arrest or disposition data or custody or adjudication data after the person has been acquitted or the charges dismissed", with an exception for acquittals and incompetency findings where physical or mental injury was alleged, which § 692.2(1)(b)(6) withholds from anyone outside criminal justice agencies. Section 692.18(1) preserves the public's chapter 22 right to examine public records, so a court file may still hold what the repository has removed.

Redissemination is barred and that shapes what a screening firm may pass on. Section 692.2(5) provides that "A person other than the department of public safety shall not disseminate criminal history data maintained by the department to persons who are not criminal or juvenile justice agencies, except as set forth in section 692.3." Section 692.2(4) adds that access "does not create a duty upon a person, or employer, member, or volunteer of a public or private agency to examine the criminal history data of an applicant, employee, or volunteer", so a negligent-hiring argument cannot be built on the availability of the check. There are real teeth behind both: § 692.5(3) makes the challenge procedure "the sole right of action against the department, its subdivisions, or employees regarding improper storage or release of criminal history data", § 692.6 creates a civil remedy of actual and exemplary damages, costs, expenses, reasonable attorney fees and a minimum of $100 per violation, and § 692.7 makes a willful communication of criminal history data outside the chapter an aggravated misdemeanor.

On the court side, the routing fact is that the file is public but the route is a terminal. Rule 16.501 makes filings public unless system restricted or filed with restricted access, and rule 16.502(4) gives the general public access "at public access terminals in the county courthouse in which the case is pending", which means a statewide court search is not something the rules offer the public directly. Rule 16.502(2) gives abstractors remote access to public documents in public court files, which is the class through which a commercial records business operates, and rule 16.504 permits bulk distribution of public electronic documents across cases at the Judicial Branch's discretion and subject to the state court administrator. The public portal itself, Iowa Courts Online, was not reachable from this environment, so the page describes the rule and not the portal.

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

What Iowa law adds

Reporting limits at a glance

Every figure below is against Iowa 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.

Iowa adds nothing to that sequence and that is worth stating rather than leaving blank. No Iowa statute requires a state pre-adverse action notice, a state copy of the report, a state waiting period or a state adverse action notice for a criminal-history report. The civil rights chapter contains no record-based claim, so an adverse action taken on a conviction is not a state discrimination claim in Iowa, and the consumer credit chapter imposes no notice duty on an employment user.

Two Iowa provisions do shape what the letter can rely on, and both are repository rules rather than notice rules. Section 692.2(1)(b)(3) and (1)(b)(4) mean that an arrest with no disposition after eighteen months, and a deferred judgment after successful probation, are released only to criminal justice agencies, the subject or the subject's attorney, or a requester holding the subject's signed release. If a report carries either category and no signed release is on file, the letter is relying on something the dissemination rule did not authorize, and § 692.2(5) separately bars any person other than the department from passing department data on outside section 692.3.

The deferred judgment is the case where the two systems disagree and the letter has to say which one it is using. The court record is expunged under § 907.9(4)(b) and, per § 907.4(2), the clerk's no-court-order route to it does not run to a consumer reporting agency. The Division of Criminal Investigation states that the same deferred judgment "will stay on a person's record with the DCI", that its file is updated to show a discharge, that this "is considered a non-conviction", and that it "will only be released with a signed release authorization from the subject of the request". A letter that treats a discharged deferred judgment as a conviction is describing the record in a way the releasing agency does not.

The juvenile exclusion cannot be cured by consent, which matters at the point a dispute is answered rather than at the point a report is ordered. The Division states that "Confidential juvenile court records cannot be included in Iowa criminal history results. A signed release authorization is not sufficient to obtain this information", and § 692.2(1)(b)(7) withholds adjudication and custody data made confidential or sealed under the juvenile provisions. A dispute that turns on a juvenile matter cannot be resolved by asking the applicant to sign a release.

Section 692.2(6)(b) is the one Iowa provision that reaches the transaction rather than the decision: where a person seeks release of their own certified copy to a potential employer and the employer requests the release in writing, the fee "shall not be paid by the person but shall be paid by the employer". A process that asks an applicant to obtain and pay for their own DCI record in order to keep a file complete has the statutory allocation the wrong way round.

Screening in Iowa: what your process needs

• Do not look for an Iowa ban-the-box rule. There is no statute and no executive order, private or public, and criminal record is not a protected class under § 216.6(1)(a). The question may still be asked at any stage, and the answer may still be decided on, subject to the federal sequence. Read § 216.6(6)(a) before assuming the civil rights chapter reaches an employer at all: it does not apply to an employer who regularly employs fewer than four individuals, and family members do not count toward the four.
• Treat the DCI check as the primary Iowa route. The eligibility class at § 692.2(1)(b) is "A person or public or private agency, upon written application", the fee is $15 per last name, and the agency states a turnaround of two to five business days.
• Order the release, not just the check. Without a signed release the Division will not release "completed deferred judgments to non-law enforcement agencies" or "Arrests over 18 months old without a final disposition", and those are the two categories an applicant most often needs accounted for.
• Do not describe a discharged deferred judgment as a conviction. The DCI records it as a discharge after successful probation, states that this "is considered a non-conviction", and releases it only on the subject's signed release.
• Do not treat the court file and the DCI file as the same record. The deferred judgment is expunged at the court level under § 907.9(4)(b) and remains on the DCI file. Whichever one a report came from decides what the report can say.
• Check payment before promising an expungement. Section 907.9(4)(b) withholds expungement of a deferred judgment until the restitution, civil penalties, court costs, fees and other financial obligations in the case have been paid, so a discharge does not by itself mean the court record is gone.
• Do not rely on § 907.9(4)(b) as an access route to the expunged record. The "upon request and without court order" access it grants runs only to those on the § 907.4(2) list, which names courts, clerks, correctional services, county attorneys, the department of public safety and the department of corrections, and does not name a consumer reporting agency.
• Know that Iowa has no felony expungement. Chapter 901C contains three sections: § 901C.2 for acquittals and dismissals, § 901C.3 for misdemeanors after more than eight years with the exclusions at § 901C.3(2) and one expungement per lifetime, and § 901C.1 for the definition.
• Do not assume a clean Iowa result means a clean record. The Division explains that "No Iowa Criminal History Found" may mean the information "is not releasable per Iowa law without a signed release authorization", or that there is juvenile information not releasable under Iowa Code 232.147.
• Do not ask an applicant for a release to reach a juvenile record. Section 692.2(1)(b)(7) withholds confidential and sealed juvenile data, and the Division states that a signed release "is not sufficient to obtain this information".
• Do not treat medical cannabis as a protected status in Iowa, and do not carry a policy across from another jurisdiction without reading it against the chapter. Section 124E.24 provides that chapter 124E creates no claim, cause of action, sanction or penalty for discrimination under chapter 216 or any other law; § 124E.21 preserves workplace prohibition, a contractual no-use term and a zero-tolerance drug testing policy under § 730.5; and § 124E.26 applies the chapter "notwithstanding any other provision of law to the contrary".
• Check the cannabis-industry bar if the role is in that sector. Section 124E.7(7) and § 124E.9(7) bar a manufacturer and a dispensary from employing a person convicted of a "disqualifying felony offense", which § 124E.2(4) defines as a felony having as an element the possession, use or distribution of a controlled substance under 21 U.S.C. § 802(6).
• Scope a court search to the tier, not only the county. Iowa has one trial court, but § 602.6405(1) gives magistrates "jurisdiction of simple misdemeanors regardless of the amount of the fine", and § 602.6306(2) gives district associate judges indictable misdemeanors, class D felonies and felony arraignments, so the office that decided the case determines what the record looks like.
• Expect the access route rather than the file to be the constraint. Rule 16.501 makes filings public, but rule 16.502(4) gives the general public access at terminals in the county courthouse where the case is pending, with remote access limited to registered filers, abstractors and a party to their own case.
• Do not ask an applicant to pay for their own DCI copy where the employer requested it in writing. Section 692.2(6)(b) provides that the fee "shall not be paid by the person but shall be paid by the employer".
• Note the local preemption pair before promising a site-specific policy. Section 364.3(12) and § 331.304(12) bar city and county ordinances providing for employment terms or conditions, including hiring practices, that exceed or conflict with state or federal law, and void those adopted before 30 March 2017.

Related states

• Illinois. Illinois splits the hiring record across two statutes with different thresholds, and the stricter one has the lower threshold. The conviction-use rule at 775 ILCS 5/2-103.1 reaches any employer with one or more employees, because the Human Rights Act definition at 775 ILCS 5/2-101(B) includes "Any person employing one or more employees within Illinois during 20 or more calendar weeks" and reaches the State, every political subdivision and every party to a public contract "without regard to the number of employees", while the ban-the-box inquiry rule at 820 ILCS 75/15 reaches only an employer or employment agency with fifteen or more employees and defines its covered employer as "any person or private entity", which leaves the public sector outside it. The use rule is a duty rather than a prohibition: a conviction record may not be a basis for an employment action unless a substantial relationship or an unreasonable risk is shown, and the state adds a notice sequence the federal one does not have, with a written preliminary notice carrying the employer reasoning and a copy of the report, at least five business days to respond, and a second written notice carrying the reasoning and the right to file a charge with the Department. Employment credit checks are restricted separately by the Employee Credit Privacy Act, 820 ILCS 70/10, which allows them only where a satisfactory credit history is an established bona fide occupational requirement.
• Minnesota. Minnesota requires a report to reach the consumer within 24 hours of going to the employer, and its ban-the-box law binds private employers with no size threshold.
• Missouri. Missouri made it unlawful to keep reporting an arrest, a pending indictment or a conviction once a pardon, an expungement or a no-conviction outcome is learned, and then required its Highway Patrol to give consumer reporting agencies the data to delete the drug-offense expungements its central repository performs automatically. Section 610.143.1 provides that records "shall no longer be reported if at any time after a conviction it is learned that a full pardon or expungement has been granted for that conviction, or at any time after an arrest or indictment it is learned that a conviction did not result", and the Attorney General enforces it with damages of not more than one thousand dollars per violation and an injunction available to any aggrieved consumer. The automatic side runs without a petition: § 610.141.3 requires the central repository to screen its database "on a rolling basis, but not less than once per week" and to expunge qualifying drug offenses as a matter of law, and § 610.141.11 feeds those deletions to consumer reporting agencies under a signed agreement. There is no separate state consumer-reporting act, so the overlay on a screening file runs through chapter 610 and chapter 43.

What we do

The direction of Iowa law is worth stating plainly, because it runs against the assumption a reader brings to a state with a medical cannabis program. The state repository is open: § 692.2(1)(b) releases criminal history data to "A person or public or private agency, upon written application", the Division of Criminal Investigation charges $15 per last name and states a two to five day turnaround, and no release is needed to ask. What the release buys is the two categories the Division withholds without one, an arrest over eighteen months old with no final disposition and a deferred judgment discharged after successful probation, and the second of those is the case where the court file and the repository file disagree: the court record is expunged under § 907.9(4)(b) while the Division's file keeps a discharge it describes as "a non-conviction" and releases only on the subject's signed authorization. There is no ban-the-box rule here, private or public, and no executive order supplies one. The medical cannabis program is real and dispensing from five dispensaries, and chapter 124E is drafted the other way from what that usually implies: § 124E.24 creates no discrimination claim at all, § 124E.21 preserves a zero-tolerance testing policy, and § 124E.26 applies the chapter notwithstanding any contrary law. The courts are one unified trial court in eight judicial districts, where magistrates decide simple misdemeanors regardless of the fine and district associate judges take indictable misdemeanors and class D felonies, so what the deciding office was matters as much as the county. Our Iowa work orders the release rather than only the check, keeps the court record and the repository record apart in what the report says, and does not describe a discharged deferred judgment as a conviction. If your current vendor treats Iowa as a closed-repository state or a protected-cannabis state, this is where that shows.

Sources

• Iowa Code § 692.2, dissemination of criminal history data and fees
• Iowa Code ch. 692, criminal history and intelligence data, read in full
• Iowa Code § 907.9, discharge from probation and expungement of deferred judgments
• Iowa Code § 907.4, the deferred judgment docket and its access list
• Iowa Code ch. 901C, expungement of criminal records
• Iowa Code ch. 124E, the Medical Cannabidiol Act, including § 124E.21, § 124E.24 and § 124E.26
• Iowa Code § 216.6, unfair or discriminatory practices in employment, and § 216.19, local laws implementing the chapter
• Iowa Code ch. 602, article 6, the district court, including §§ 602.6101, 602.6103, 602.6104, 602.6107, 602.6201, 602.6306 and 602.6405
• Iowa Court Rules ch. 16, Iowa Rules of Electronic Procedure, Division V public access
• Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, Criminal history record check information
• Iowa Department of Health and Human Services, Medical Cannabis program and dispensary locations
• Iowa Judicial Branch, District Court and the eight judicial district pages
• Iowa Code § 364.3, limitation of city powers, and § 331.304, county powers, the employment preemption pair
• Iowa Code ch. 715D, the Consumer Data Protection Act
• Iowa Code ch. 714G, Consumer Credit Security, and ch. 730, employer-employee offenses
• Route note: every source above was read live from the State of Iowa's own hosts (legis.iowa.gov, iowacourts.gov, dps.iowa.gov and hhs.iowa.gov), with no archive replay, mirror or proxy used anywhere in this pass, so no route correction is needed for the citations themselves. Three access failures are recorded because they bound what the page asserts rather than because a route was needed: Iowa Courts Online at iowacourts.state.ia.us/ESAWebApp/SelectAction returns "Application Error. Please retry your last action again later."; governor.iowa.gov/executive-orders returns HTTP 404 and the working index is at /meet-governor-kim-reynolds/executive-orders; and executive order 18 is a scan with no text layer. No municipal code host was readable: library.municode.com serves a JavaScript shell with no server-rendered code text, and codelibrary.amlegal.com, dsm.city and icgov.org return HTTP 403, which is why slot 4 is omitted.

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.