KY · state guide

Kentucky background screening law

How the courts here are organized

Kentucky is a unified court system, and the unification is constitutional rather than administrative. Section 109 of the Constitution vests "[t]he judicial power of the Commonwealth" "exclusively in one Court of Justice which shall be divided into a Supreme Court, a Court of Appeals, a trial court of general jurisdiction known as the Circuit Court and a trial court of limited jurisdiction known as the District Court", and adds: "The court shall constitute a unified judicial system for operation and administration." It was ratified on 4 November 1975 and took effect on 1 January 1976, replacing a patchwork of county courts. The administrative body is the Administrative Office of the Courts, and the portal the system runs its public searches and filings through is branded KYeCourts.

There are 120 counties and there are not 120 trial courts. KRS 23A.020 divides the Commonwealth into judicial circuits and the section contains 57 numbered circuits, each composed of one or more whole counties, from the First Judicial Circuit (Ballard, Carlisle, Fulton and Hickman) to the Fifty-seventh (Nelson). KRS 24A.030 divides it into judicial districts, and there are 59 numbered districts in the version effective until 1 January 2031 and 58 in the version effective on that date, the difference being a district-by-district reconfiguration under 2022 Ky. Acts ch. 129, sec. 7. A circuit and a district of the same number need not cover the same counties: the Tenth Judicial Circuit is Hart, Larue and Nelson, while the Tenth Judicial District is Hart and Larue, with Nelson forming its own fifty-seventh district. Scoping a search by county name therefore has to be translated into the right circuit and the right district, and the two do not map onto each other.

Felonies and misdemeanors are split cleanly between the two trial courts, with one exception that matters to search design. KRS 23A.010(1) makes the Circuit Court "a court of general jurisdiction" with "original jurisdiction of all justiciable causes not exclusively vested in some other court", and KRS 23A.010(3) makes it "a court of record and of continuous session". KRS 24A.110(1) gives the District Court "exclusive jurisdiction to make final disposition of all criminal matters, including violations of county, urban-county, or city ordinances or codes", excepting "[o]ffenses denominated by statute as felonies or capital offenses" and "[o]ffenses punishable by death or imprisonment in the penitentiary". KRS 24A.110(2) adds exclusive final disposition of misdemeanors and violations "except where the charge is joined with an indictment for a felony", and jurisdiction "prior to trial, to commit the defendant". So a felony enters through District Court as an examining court and is finally disposed of in Circuit Court, and a misdemeanor stays in District Court unless it is joined with a felony indictment, which is the one route by which a single incident leaves entries in two courts.

The gap in Kentucky is not between a repository that is open and one that is closed. It is between three routes that each answer a different question, and none of them is a criminal history record check in the sense a screening program uses the phrase. The free KYeCourts guest search returns case information from the court system's own application host, and its terms of use exclude employment use and forbid batch access. The AOC Records Unit report returns a compiled statewide criminal record, costs $25, and discloses the requester to the subject on any found record. The state repository holds the arrest, charge and disposition data that no court search returns, and KRS 17.150(4) keeps it out of public inspection entirely, with the only employer gateway being KRS 17.160 for positions with supervisory or disciplinary power over a minor.

The custodian question is the one that costs time. The Administrative Office of the Courts states plainly that it "does not maintain court case records, is not the source of those records and does not provide access to them", and that "[t]he circuit court clerk is the legal custodian of court records". That is true of the case documents even though the AOC compiles and sells the criminal record report. Case records 15 to 35 years old sit at the State Records Center and records 36 years old and over at the Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives, and for the 15 to 35 year band "[t]he case and locator numbers must be provided as these records cannot be searched only by name and/or Social Security number". An archival retrieval is a targeted pull against a known case, not a name sweep.

Three things will trip a process built on assumptions from elsewhere. First, the AOC report excludes cases "expunged or purged by the county where the case was filed", so an expunged felony will be missing from the report while a record of the underlying arrest may survive in a source outside the court system, which is exactly the pattern KRS 367.310 is aimed at. Second, the report excludes juvenile, mental health and domestic violence cases by the AOC's own account, so a clean report is not a clean record. Third, the filing locations do not line up with the count of 120: an offense charged in a county sitting in the Fifty-seventh Judicial District and the Tenth Judicial Circuit will carry a district court number and possibly a circuit court number for the same incident, and the joinder rule in KRS 24A.110(2) is the reason.

Screening on a Kentucky charge therefore has to run the AOC report as the compiled state source, then verify anything dispositive against the Office of Circuit Court Clerk in the county where the case was filed, because that office is the legal custodian and the report is expressly "[n]ot an Official Court Record". The 1978 floor on felony coverage is a real limit rather than a formality for an older applicant, and it is the point at which the report stops rather than the point at which the record stops.

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

What Kentucky law adds

Reporting limits at a glance

Every figure below is against Kentucky 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.

Kentucky adds a state duty that runs the other way, and it lands before any decision is made. The Administrative Office of the Courts states, in its own words on its Background Checks page: "If you request a report on another person and a record is found, the AOC Records Unit will notify that person that you requested his or her criminal record report. The Records Unit will also send that person a copy of his or her report results." The disclosure is triggered by a found record and not by an adverse outcome, so a Kentucky applicant who is ultimately hired may still have received the results and the identity of the requester. Where the process is built on the AOC report, the applicant-facing communication has to be written on the assumption that this disclosure happens, rather than as a fallback for the cases that go wrong.

A second, quieter state duty concerns what may sit in the file at all. KRS 367.310 provides that "[n]o consumer reporting agency shall maintain any information in its files relating to any charge in a criminal case, in any court of this Commonwealth, unless the charge has resulted in a conviction". That is a maintenance prohibition and it applies whether or not the information was ever furnished to anyone. A pre-adverse action letter that describes a Kentucky charge which did not end in a conviction is describing something the file should not have held, and the underlying record may already have been expunged by operation of KRS 431.076(1)(a) thirty days after an acquittal or a dismissal with prejudice.

Expungement changes what a letter can say, and the state restricts the paper trail around it. KRS 431.074(2) makes the AOC's index of expungement orders accessible only to a person preparing an eligibility certification under KRS 431.079 or the Kentucky Law Enforcement Council, so the index is not a verification route for an employer or an agency. KRS 431.079 requires a petition or application for expungement to carry a certification of eligibility from the Department of Kentucky State Police and the Administrative Office of the Courts together. Where a report shows a conviction the applicant says was vacated under KRS 431.073 or expunged under KRS 431.078, the certification route through the two agencies is the authoritative check and the AOC report alone is not.

The routes an applicant has against a public employer are the real Kentucky overlay on the federal sequence. KRS 335B.030(1)(a) requires written findings of fact on a denial based on a prior conviction, stating the grounds and reasons, the right to a KRS Chapter 13B hearing on a written request within ten working days, "[t]he earliest date the person may reapply" and that new or previously submitted evidence of rehabilitation may be considered. KRS 335B.030(2)(a) requires a notice before disqualification, a demonstration of the connection between the conviction and the position, and an opportunity to be "personally heard before the board", and KRS 335B.030(3) places the burden of proving the direct relation on the authority. Those duties bind public employers and licensing authorities, not private employers, and a private-sector letter relies on the federal sequence and KRS 367.310 alone.

Screening in Kentucky: what your process needs

• Before ordering anything, decide which of the three Kentucky routes answers the question being asked. The KYeCourts guest search is a reading tool whose terms of use bar employment use. The AOC record report is a compiled statewide product that discloses the requester. The KSP repository is closed and is not available to a commercial employer.
• Do not build a product on the free CourtNet or KYeCourts search. Its Terms of Use state that "[i]nformation obtained through your use of this Site cannot be used for employment, licensing, eligibility for government programs" and that "[a]bsolutely no batch processes are allowed to run against this Site or the data contained herein".
• Order the AOC criminal record report from the Records Unit at 1001 Vandalay Drive, Frankfort, KY 40601, on form AOC-RU-004, at $25.00 per individual, with payment by check or money order to the Kentucky State Treasurer for mailed requests. Confirm the current FastCheck figure separately if the online route is used.
• Plan the applicant communication around the third-party notification rule. On a found record the AOC notifies the subject that the report was requested and sends the subject the results, whether or not any adverse decision follows.
• Treat a Kentucky AOC report as "[n]ot an Official Court Record". The Office of Circuit Court Clerk in the county where the case was filed is the legal custodian, and anything dispositive should be verified there.
• Scope searches by judicial circuit and judicial district as well as by county. There are 57 circuits and 59 districts across 120 counties, and a district and a circuit of the same number need not cover the same counties. The 59 becomes 58 on 1 January 2031.
• Expect one incident to carry both a district court number and a circuit court number where a misdemeanor was joined with a felony indictment, which KRS 24A.110(2) permits.
• Purge non-conviction Kentucky charge data from files. KRS 367.310 prohibits a consumer reporting agency from maintaining information relating to "any charge in a criminal case, in any court of this Commonwealth, unless the charge has resulted in a conviction", and the prohibition attaches to the file rather than to the disclosure.
• Re-check dispositions rather than the charge. KRS 431.076(1)(a) expunges an acquittal or a dismissal with prejudice thirty days after the order without any action by the person, and the AOC report excludes cases expunged or purged by the county.
• Do not read a clean AOC report as a clean record. The AOC states the report excludes juvenile, mental health and domestic violence cases, and it covers state court activity only and no federal information.
• Do not treat the Kentucky State Police repository as an available source. KRS 17.150(4) states that "[c]entralized criminal history records are not subject to public inspection", and the employer gateway at KRS 17.160 reaches only positions with supervisory or disciplinary power over a minor and only qualifying organizations.
• If a role does fall within KRS 17.160, use the approved form, expect the cabinet to send a copy of the results to the applicant, and do not fingerprint: KRS 17.160(3) forbids any administrative regulation "requiring or authorizing the fingerprinting of applicants".
• Do not screen on the assumption that medical cannabis protects the applicant. KRS 218B.040(1)(d) provides that nothing in the chapter shall "[p]ermit a cause of action against an employer for wrongful discharge or discrimination", and KRS 218B.045(1) supplies only a drug-testing parity right.
• For public-sector and licensed roles, build the KRS 335B process rather than improvising it: a pre-application determination under KRS 335B.032, written findings of fact on any denial, a ten working day hearing request window under KRS 335B.030(1)(a), and the burden of proving direct relation carried by the authority under KRS 335B.030(3).
• Where an applicant says a conviction was vacated or expunged, use the KRS 431.079 certification route through the Department of Kentucky State Police and the Administrative Office of the Courts. The AOC expungement index at KRS 431.074 is not open to an employer or an agency.
• For records older than fifteen years, remember that the State Records Center band of 15 to 35 years cannot be searched by name alone, and that the case and locator numbers must come from the Office of Circuit Court Clerk first.

Related states

• Tennessee. Tennessee sells its own criminal history to anyone: the Bureau of Investigation offers a "Tennessee Only" check at "$29" with "FINGERPRINTS NOT REQUIRED", while the nationwide product is $50 and does require them, so the state report on a named person is the cheaper and more open of the two and no employment purpose has to be established to buy it. The expunction paragraph every summary quotes is gone: Public Chapter 268 of 2025, Senate Bill 1055, rewrote § 40-32-101 as a definitions section and re-enacted the "never occurred" rule and the bar on collateral consequences at § 40-32-110(b) and (c), so a page citing § 40-32-101(g) for the effect of an expunction is citing a paragraph that no longer exists. The mechanism is deletion rather than sealing, which is what separates a Tennessee expunction from a screening file built before the order: § 40-32-110(a) entitles the petitioner "to have all public records of the expunged conviction destroyed in the manner set forth in this chapter", and the bureau describes its own practice as "At TBI, the charges are actually deleted from the defendant’s record" and "we do not ’seal’ records". The courts are 95 counties run through 32 judicial districts, and General Sessions, which sits in every county, is where a misdemeanor is decided whenever the defendant waives the grand jury and the jury, so the tier that holds most misdemeanor dispositions is not the circuit file.
• Indiana. Indiana prohibits its political subdivisions from barring an employer from making a criminal history inquiry, or requiring disclosure, at the initial application stage: IC 22-2-17-3 provides that unless federal or state law provides otherwise, a political subdivision may not prohibit an employer from obtaining or using criminal history information during the hiring process or from making the inquiry at the time of an initial application, and the definition it borrows at IC 22-2-17-1 covers arrests and detentions as well as convictions, so the preemption protects the right to ask about an arrest. The state then splits expungement into two tracks and seals only one: IC 35-38-9-6(b) makes misdemeanor and Level 6 felony records "permanently sealed", while IC 35-38-9-7(b) leaves more serious felony records as records that "remain public records", ordered only to be "clearly and visibly marked or identified as being expunged". A provider is nonetheless barred from reporting the marked record by IC 24-4-18-6(a)(1), and an expungement order reaches the State Police only because the local court forwards it, in a state with ninety-two county court chapters across ninety-one circuits.
• Ohio. Ohio renumbered its sealing chapter, so the test most screening policies quote now has a different address: the "unless the question bears a direct and substantial relationship to the position for which the person is being considered" language sits at R.C. 2953.34(N)(2)(a), and R.C. 2953.33 is now the non-conviction provision covering a not-guilty finding, a dismissal, a no bill or a pardon, which the chapter heading records as "[Former R.C. 2953.52, amended and renumbered by S.B. 288, 134th General Assembly, effective 4/4/2023]". The state repository is narrower than the courts: R.C. 109.57(A)(1) has the superintendent hold felonies and a named set of misdemeanors, so an ordinary misdemeanor reaches a search only through the county courts. For cannabis, R.C. 3796.28(A)(5) gives an employer a defense rather than a duty.

What we do

Kentucky is a state where the obvious shortcut is closed and the honest route has a disclosure attached to it. The free statewide case search looks like a screening source until the terms of use are read, and the paid statewide report comes with a statutory-style notice to the subject that a commercial product cannot opt out of. Personnelgraph treats a Kentucky search as the AOC Statewide Criminal Record Report as the compiled source, verified against the Office of Circuit Court Clerk where a disposition is dispositive, with the file built so that no non-conviction charge is retained in breach of KRS 367.310 and the applicant communication drafted on the assumption that the Administrative Office of the Courts has already told the applicant the search happened. This page sets out what is verified at a primary source and names what is not: the FastCheck fee, the enforcement route for KRS 367.310, and every Kentucky municipal code.

Sources

• KRS 367.310, Consumer reporting agency records restriction
• KRS 17.150, Reports by law enforcement officers and criminal justice agencies, public inspection exemptions
• KRS 17.160, Furnishing potential employer with person's record of convictions
• KRS 17.185, Request to the Department of Kentucky State Police to conduct a background check on oneself
• KRS 431.073, Certain felony convictions may be vacated and the records expunged
• KRS 431.074, Index of expungement orders, restricted access
• KRS 431.076, Expungement of criminal records for those acquitted or dismissed
• KRS 335B.020, Disqualification from public employment or occupational license prohibited
• KRS 335B.030, Written findings of fact and burden of proof
• KRS 335B.032, Determination of whether a conviction disqualifies
• KRS 218B.040, Employer not required to permit or accommodate use
• KRS 218B.045, Patient rights under state and local law
• KRS 367.3611, Kentucky Consumer Data Protection Act definitions
• KRS 367.3613, Application, limitations and information and data exemptions
• KRS 23A.020, Judicial circuits
• KRS 24A.030, Judicial districts
• Section 109 of the Constitution of Kentucky, the judicial power and the unified system
• Kentucky Court of Justice, KYeCourts guest login and public records search, live
• Kentucky Court of Justice, Terms of Use (Limitation on Use of Information; Data Mining, Spiders, and High Volume Page Access)
• Administrative Office of the Courts, Background Checks, read through Internet Archive raw replay
• Administrative Office of the Courts, form AOC-RU-004, Records Unit request form and fee, read through Internet Archive raw replay
• Administrative Office of the Courts, Request Court Records, read through Internet Archive raw replay
• Route note: every host under legislature.ky.gov, www.kycourts.gov, kycourts.gov, courts.ky.gov, kentucky.gov and justice.ky.gov returns a uniform 1,484-byte Azure Front Door HTTP 403 from this environment to every path tried, with and without a browser user agent. apps.legislature.ky.gov and kcoj.kycourts.net were reachable live and unblocked, and every statute quotation on this page was read live at apps.legislature.ky.gov on 23 September 2026, where the revision records that it "[i]ncludes enactments through the 2026 Regular Session". The AOC Background Checks page, form AOC-RU-004 and the Request Court Records page were read through Internet Archive raw replay with the id_ modifier, from the captures 20260909205456, 2024 and 20250514105021 respectively. ksp.ky.gov returns curl status 000 and does not resolve, so the State Police's own pages were not read. library.municode.com returns a JavaScript shell for the Louisville and Jefferson County code and codelibrary.amlegal.com returns HTTP 403 to every header set tried, so no Kentucky municipal code was read and the cities field is omitted rather than answered. r.jina.ai returns a Cloudflare interstitial for kycourts.gov. Full-text searches of the revised statutes were run against the legislature's own search endpoint at apps.legislature.ky.gov/LRCSearch on 23 September 2026; it is an AND search over section text and not a phrase index, so its negatives are recorded as findings about the instruments read rather than as proof of absence. A retrieval trap worth recording: statute.aspx takes a numeric id only, and ?statute=, ?name= and even a section-number id all return HTTP 200 and silently serve the statutes index.

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.