LA · state guide
Louisiana background screening law
What is different here
- Louisiana bars a private employer from requesting or considering an arrest record or charge that did not result in a conviction when that information arrives in the course of a background check. The bar has no age limit and no salary exemption, so it is not a seven-year rule in the federal shape. It is a prohibition on the category.
- The same statute requires an individual assessment before other criminal history is acted on, weighing the nature and gravity of the offense, the time elapsed, and the nature of the job sought. On written request the applicant is entitled to the background check information that was used, and that right is not limited to consumer reporting agency files.
- Louisiana defines felony by punishment rather than by sentence length. A felony is any crime for which an offender may be sentenced to death or imprisonment at hard labor, and a misdemeanor is any crime other than a felony. Which court holds a record therefore cannot be read off a statute number.
- The court structure carries a numbering quirk that the statute itself does not resolve. One section states that there are forty-one judicial districts and then, further down, creates a forty-second for DeSoto Parish.
- A written consent plus a background check buys an employer something unusual here: immunity from civil liability arising out of the disclosure of the information obtained, extending to failure-to-hire, wrongful termination, invasion of privacy, and third-party negligent hiring claims.
- The state also protects employers rather than users on cannabis, and that provision terminates itself on 1 July 2030.
How the courts here are organized
Louisiana has five courts of appeal, created by R.S. 13:312, which provides that there shall be five court of appeal circuits subdivided into districts. Below them sit the district courts, and the section that creates them is worth reading twice.
R.S. 13:477 states that there shall be forty-one judicial districts in the state and that each district shall be composed as follows. It then lists them, and at item (42) it provides that the parish of DeSoto shall compose the Forty-Second District. Both numbers are in the operative text of the same section. A provider that says Louisiana has 41 districts is reading the first clause, and one that says 42 is reading the last, and neither is describing the statute.
The reason the district count matters less than it looks is that Louisiana decides which court holds a record by punishment rather than by the name or number of the offense. R.S. 14:2(4) defines a felony as any crime for which an offender may be sentenced to death or imprisonment at hard labor. R.S. 14:2(6) defines a misdemeanor as any crime other than a felony. There is no maximum-sentence threshold to look up.
That definition then propagates through the tiers. R.S. 13:1894(A) limits the criminal jurisdiction of city courts to offenses not punishable by imprisonment at hard labor, which takes in state offenses, violations of municipal or parochial ordinances adopted under R.S. 14:143, and any other municipal or parochial ordinance. Subsection (C) lets a city judge issue warrants of arrest, examine, commit, admit to bail and discharge, and hold preliminary examinations in all cases not capital.
Orleans Parish runs on its own rule. R.S. 13:1336(A) gives the criminal district court for the Parish of Orleans exclusive jurisdiction of the trial and punishment of all crimes, misdemeanors and offenses committed within the parish, where the jurisdiction is not vested by law in some other court.
One list recurs across the state’s screening statutes and is worth knowing by name. R.S. 14:2(B) defines a crime of violence and enumerates the offenses included in it. Louisiana’s employment provisions cross-reference that list, which is how a category defined for sentencing purposes ends up determining an employer’s obligations.
| Courts of appeal | Five circuits, subdivided into districts |
|---|---|
| Judicial districts | 41 stated, with a 42nd created in the same section |
| The 42nd | DeSoto Parish, at R.S. 13:477(42) |
| Felony line | Death or imprisonment at hard labor |
| Misdemeanor | Any crime other than a felony |
| Orleans Parish | Criminal district court has exclusive jurisdiction |
| City courts | Offenses not punishable at hard labor, plus municipal and parochial ordinances |
| Preliminary examinations | City judges hold them in all cases not capital |
| State repository | State Police Bureau of Criminal Identification and Information |
| Parish count | Not verified in this pass, so no count is stated |
The felony definition is the operational consequence, and it is a different kind of problem from a jurisdictional gap. Where a state splits a category of offense across two court tiers, the search has to reach both. Here the classification itself is not a fact you can look up: whether a given offense is a felony in Louisiana depends on the sentence the law authorizes for it, so the answer lives in the sentencing provision rather than in the section that names the crime.
Two gaps in this spine should be stated rather than papered over. The Supreme Court’s own jurisdiction was not read, so no line is printed about it here, and the top of the structure is therefore incomplete. And the parish count was not verified from a primary source in this pass, so the page does not state one. Both are recorded in the pending list below. A court structure section that silently omits the top of the hierarchy is worse than one that says where it stops.
The repository is held by the Louisiana State Police, through the Bureau of Criminal Identification and Information, which maintains the Louisiana Computerized Criminal History. Non-criminal justice access is statutory: the State Police describe it as available to agencies statutorily allowed as defined in R.S. 15:587. Submission runs on a fingerprint card to the bureau, and the State Police operate a centralized vendor vetting program under R.S. 15:587(D)(1). Results are accessible by computer only and cannot be retrieved from a mobile device.
One operational detail from the State Police is worth carrying because it is easy to miss. The bureau states plainly that criminal history information is a valuable tool for law enforcement, the courts, corrections, employers and permitting entities, which places employers inside the authorized group rather than at the edge of it.
The limit on this is that R.S. 15:587 itself was not read. The State Police pages describe the access rule as turning on it, so the authority for employer access is named and the text of the authorizing statute is not, which is a weaker footing than the rest of this page stands on.
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 Louisiana adds on top of that floor, and where it departs from it.
What Louisiana law adds
Its own consumer reporting statute
Yes, but it is a credit reporting act with employment hooks rather than a general consumer reporting act, and the distinction should shape how it is described. R.S. 9:3571.1 defines credit report at (H)(2) as a communication of any credit information bearing on a consumer’s credit worthiness, credit standing or credit capacity, so the accuracy and dispute duties are credit-scoped. The remedies are not: (D) gives a consumer denied credit, insurance or employment on the whole or partial basis of agency information a free copy of the report on written request, (E) requires a record of recipients of reports furnished for employment consideration for the two years preceding the request, and (F) and (G) create recovery for actual damages plus attorney fees, with (G)(3) making a failure to comply with the federal act presumptive evidence of a failure to exercise due diligence. (A)(1) allows five business days to mail a report on written request, (A)(3) caps the fee at eight dollars indexed to CPI each 21 August, (C) allows 45 calendar days to correct or give a written status update on a dispute, and (B) requires reasonable procedures to comply with the federal act and this section. One drafting detail is worth carrying because it is the kind of thing a customer will ask about: the deadline in (D) is written to run from being denied credit by a third party, so the sixty-day window is drafted for the credit case even though the entitlement it attaches to names employment as well.
R.S. 9:3571.1(D) · R.S. 9:3571.1(E) · R.S. 9:3571.1(G)(3) · R.S. 9:3571.1(H)(2)
Ban-the-box, private employers
Yes, and it is a real prohibition rather than a timing rule. R.S. 23:291.2(A) provides that when making a hiring decision an employer shall not request or consider an arrest record or charge that did not result in a conviction, if the information is received in the course of a background check. Subsection (B) requires an individual assessment of whether the criminal history has a direct and adverse relationship with the specific duties of the job that may justify denial, weighing the nature and gravity of the offense or conduct, the time elapsed, and the nature of the job sought. Subsection (C) requires an employer, on written request by the applicant, to make available any background check information used during the hiring process. Enacted by Acts 2021, No. 406.
R.S. 23:291.2(A) · R.S. 23:291.2(B) · R.S. 23:291.2(C)
Ban-the-box, public employers
Yes, by rule rather than by statute. Civil Service Rule 22.4.1 provides that no state employer, when filling a position in the classified service, may inquire on an initial application form about a prospective employee’s felony criminal history unless the position has a legal restriction prohibiting employment because of a criminal conviction, and that the appointing authority may inquire about criminal history during the interview or after a conditional offer. Cite this as a rule. The private-sector statute reaches public employers too on its face, because R.S. 23:291.2 says an employer without a public or private split, so Louisiana has two layers here and not one.
Civil Service Rule 22.4.1 · R.S. 23:291.2(A)
Size threshold
No size threshold is stated in R.S. 23:291.2, and the section contains no definition of employer. The nearest definition is at R.S. 23:291(C)(2), which defines employer as any person, firm or corporation, including the state and its political subdivisions and their agents, that has one or more employees or individuals performing services under any contract of hire, but that definition is expressly scoped to the section it sits in. Whether R.S. 23:291.2 borrows it is a question of construction that was not settled, so this page states only that no threshold appears in the section.
R.S. 23:291.2 · R.S. 23:291(C)(2)
Lookback limits
No fixed numeric limit found in the two sections that would carry one. Louisiana uses the factor test at R.S. 23:291.2(B) instead, which is the Title VII and EEOC structure enacted into state law. This is recorded as not found at the scope read rather than as a negative across the whole of Title 23, which was not searched as a corpus.
R.S. 23:291.2(B)
Non-conviction reporting
An outright bar rather than a time bar. R.S. 23:291.2(A) prohibits requesting or considering an arrest record or charge that did not result in a conviction, with no age limit on the record and no salary exemption, and its trigger is receipt in the course of a background check. Louisiana therefore does not restrict non-convictions more tightly than convictions on a clock, the way the federal rule does. It removes the category. The expungement framework at R.S. 42:1191 to 1194 exists and its numbering and headings were confirmed, but its operative text was not read, so nothing is stated here about what it does.
R.S. 23:291.2(A)
Salary threshold
None found, and the employment right is not pay-gated. No compensation-based exemption appears in R.S. 9:3571.1, R.S. 23:291 or R.S. 23:291.2. The free-report right at R.S. 9:3571.1(D) is triggered by an employment denial on the whole or partial basis of agency information with no salary condition, which is broader than the federal treatment at 15 U.S.C. §1681c(b)(3).
R.S. 9:3571.1(D)
Cannabis
Employer-side, and it expires. R.S. 40:1046(J) provides that, notwithstanding any other provision of law to the contrary, employers and their workers’ compensation insurers shall not be obliged or ordered to pay for medical marijuana in claims arising under the workers’ compensation law. Subsection (M) terminates the section on 1 July 2030. This is the inverse of the cannabis-user protection statutes in force elsewhere: Louisiana’s employment-facing cannabis rule protects the employer and the carrier rather than the user. No Louisiana statute barring discrimination against medical marijuana patients was found in the sections read, which is not the same as a finding that none exists. An earlier attribution of a cannabis provision to R.S. 23:1044 is withdrawn; the section exists but its text was not read.
R.S. 40:1046(J) · R.S. 40:1046(M)
Credit checks
No employment credit-check ban found. The credit-specific employment feature that is verified runs the other way: R.S. 9:3571.1(L)(4) exempts from the security alert and security freeze duties any database or file consisting solely of information adverse to the consumer, including criminal record information, used for fraud prevention or detection, tenant screening, employment screening, or any purpose permitted by the federal act. For a provider whose file is solely adverse information, that exemption is the operative Louisiana provision. Whether any Louisiana statute restricts employment credit checks elsewhere in the Code was not established, because no such provision was found in the sections read.
R.S. 9:3571.1(L)(4)
Statewide repository
Louisiana State Police, Bureau of Criminal Identification and Information, holding the Louisiana Computerized Criminal History. Non-criminal justice access is statutory, described by the State Police as available to agencies statutorily allowed as defined in R.S. 15:587. Submission runs on a fingerprint card to the bureau, and the State Police operate a centralized vendor vetting program under R.S. 15:587(D)(1). Results are accessible by computer only and cannot be retrieved from a mobile device. The State Police place employers inside the authorized group expressly, describing criminal history information as a tool for law enforcement, the courts, corrections, employers and permitting entities. The text of R.S. 15:587 itself was not read, so the authority is named and not verified.
R.S. 15:587(D)(1)
Court structure
Five courts of appeal at R.S. 13:312. District courts at R.S. 13:477, which states forty-one judicial districts and then creates a forty-second for DeSoto Parish in the same section. Orleans Parish criminal district court has exclusive jurisdiction under R.S. 13:1336(A) where jurisdiction is not vested elsewhere. City courts are limited by R.S. 13:1894(A) to offenses not punishable by imprisonment at hard labor, plus municipal and parochial ordinance violations, and may hold preliminary examinations in all cases not capital. The felony line is defined by punishment rather than by sentence length, at R.S. 14:2(4) and (6). The Supreme Court’s jurisdiction was not read and is not stated. Parish courts and justice of the peace courts appear in Title 13 but their jurisdictional sections were not read.
R.S. 13:312 · R.S. 13:477 · R.S. 13:1336(A) · R.S. 13:1894(A) · R.S. 14:2(4)
Negligent hiring
Shielded in two places. R.S. 23:291(D)(1) immunizes an employer that conducted a background check after obtaining written consent from liability arising out of the disclosure of the information obtained, extending to failure-to-hire, wrongful termination, invasion of privacy, and third-party negligent hiring and retention claims. R.S. 23:291(E)(1) separately bars negligent-hiring and negligent-supervision claims brought solely because of a prior conviction, with exceptions at (E)(2) for acts substantially related to the crime where the employer knew or should have known, and for crimes of violence under R.S. 14:2(B) or sex offenses under R.S. 15:541. R.S. 23:291.1(C) adds a third shield for a certified employee holding a certificate of employability.
R.S. 23:291(D)(1) · R.S. 23:291(E)(1) · R.S. 23:291(E)(2) · R.S. 23:291.1(C)
Automated decision law
Not established in this pass. The legislature’s search endpoints are postback-only and were never queried successfully, so no search was run and no negative is reported. Louisiana’s own enactments on the subject were not checked. This is a gap rather than an answer, and nothing is asserted on the page.
The statute that surprises people
The immunity that arrives with the consent form
R.S. 23:291
Louisiana’s screening provisions are unusually favorable to the employer, and the reason is a single pairing of subsections.
R.S. 23:291(D)(1) provides that an employer which has conducted a background check of an employee or prospective employee after having obtained written consent is immune from civil liability for any and all claims arising out of the disclosure of the background information obtained. The subsection then extends that limit expressly across the whole of the employment relationship and beyond it: to claims of the employee based on a failure to hire, wrongful termination and invasion of privacy, and to claims of any owner, operator or third person for negligent hiring or negligent retention.
Subsection (D)(2) defines background check to include criminal history repositories and searches for federal Fair Credit Reporting Act permissible purposes, so the immunity is not confined to a particular product or source.
Subsection (E)(1) then shields an employer, general contractor or premises owner separately from negligent-hiring and negligent-supervision claims brought solely because an employee or independent contractor has previously been convicted of a criminal offense. That shield has two exceptions at (E)(2): where the act is substantially related to the crime and the employer knew or should have known of the conviction, and where the employee was convicted of a crime of violence under R.S. 14:2(B) or a sex offense under R.S. 15:541.
The enactment chain is Acts 1995, No. 632, amended by Acts 2003, No. 853 and Acts 2014, No. 335.
Two things follow for a provider. First, the consent is the hinge: the immunity in (D) is explicitly conditioned on written consent obtained before the check, so here the authorization document is doing compliance work of its own rather than only evidencing a federal permissible purpose. Second, the (E) shield is not absolute and its exceptions are substantive. A crime-of-violence conviction under R.S. 14:2(B) sits outside the shield entirely, whatever the relationship between the offense and the job.
Louisiana also has a second, narrower mechanism running in the same direction. R.S. 23:291.1 creates a certificate of employability, issued by a reentry division judge on a temporary basis to an offender under intensive supervision and permanently to one who has completed the sentence. Subsection (C) then bars a cause of action for negligent hiring or inadequate supervision against an employer, general contractor, premises owner or other third party for damages caused by a certified employee, solely because that employee was previously convicted of a criminal offense.
Reporting limits at a glance
Every figure below is against Louisiana law. Where a row says “federal only”, the state has set nothing and 15 U.S.C. §1681c governs.
| Dimension | Limit | Source and qualification |
|---|---|---|
| State consumer reporting law | R.S. 9:3571.1 | A credit reporting act with employment hooks. Its definitions are credit-scoped; its remedies reach employment denials. |
| Non-conviction bar, private employers | Outright | R.S. 23:291.2(A). No age limit, no salary exemption. Received in a background check. |
| Individual assessment | Required | R.S. 23:291.2(B). Nature and gravity, time elapsed, nature of the job. |
| Applicant disclosure right | On written request | R.S. 23:291.2(C). Any background check information used, not only agency files. |
| Size threshold | None stated | R.S. 23:291.2 contains no definition of employer. Whether it borrows the one-employee definition at 291(C)(2) was not settled. |
| Lookback limits | No fixed limit found | The factor test does the work instead. Title 23 was not searched as a corpus. |
| Salary threshold | None found | The free-report right at 9:3571.1(D) has no salary condition. |
| Ban-the-box, public | By civil service rule | Rule 22.4.1, classified service, initial application form only. R.S. 23:291.2 also reaches public employers on its face. |
| Cannabis | Employer-side protection | R.S. 40:1046(J). Employers and their carriers need not pay for medical marijuana. Terminates 1 July 2030. |
| Credit checks | No ban found | R.S. 9:3571.1(L)(4) exempts employment-screening databases from the freeze and alert duties. |
| State repository access | Statutorily allowed | LSP BCII, LACCH. Authority named as R.S. 15:587. Fingerprint card submission. Vendor vetting under 15:587(D)(1). |
| Negligent hiring, consent route | Immune | R.S. 23:291(D)(1), where a background check was conducted after written consent. |
| Negligent hiring, conviction route | Immune with exceptions | R.S. 23:291(E). Exceptions for substantially related acts known to the employer, crimes of violence and sex offenses. |
| Certificate of employability | Additional shield | R.S. 23:291.1. Issued by a reentry division judge, temporary and permanent forms. |
| Felony line | Defined by punishment | R.S. 14:2(4). Death or imprisonment at hard labor. Not a maximum-sentence test. |
| Judicial districts | 41 and 42 | R.S. 13:477 states forty-one and creates a forty-second for DeSoto Parish in the same section. |
Adverse action here
The federal sequence applies: pre-adverse action notice with the report and the summary of rights, a reasonable opportunity to respond, then the adverse action notice with the agency’s details and a dispute route. The FCRA article sets it out in full.
Louisiana adds two things ahead of it, and both can be breached before the sequence begins. The first is R.S. 23:291.2(A). Because the bar on requesting or considering a non-conviction arrest has no age limit, the breach happens when the record is requested or considered rather than when a decision is made, and an employer that receives such a record in a background check and leaves it in the file has a problem the adverse action sequence does not address.
The second is the individual assessment at R.S. 23:291.2(B). For criminal history other than a non-conviction, the statute requires the employer to weigh three named factors before denying the position. That is a documented reasoning step, not a conclusion, and it sits with the employer rather than with the provider. What a provider can do is supply the third factor, the nature of the job, in a form the employer can use, and make sure the first two are on the face of the report.
There is a route the applicant can take that has no federal equivalent. R.S. 23:291.2(C) entitles the applicant, on written request, to any background check information used during the hiring process, and it is not limited to consumer reporting agency files. So an employer that used an internal record, a reference note or a social media check is within the scope of the request. A provider is not the party that answers it, but a customer asking how to comply will be asking about material the provider never saw.
Screening in Louisiana: what your process needs
- Confirm the configuration excludes non-conviction arrests and charges in Louisiana entirely rather than applying a seven-year clock to them. R.S. 23:291.2(A) has no age limit.
- Confirm a Louisiana non-conviction item cannot be requested or surfaced, since the bar attaches to requesting and considering and not only to reporting.
- Confirm the individual assessment under R.S. 23:291.2(B) is a documented step for any other criminal history, and that the report carries the offense date and disposition date the assessment needs.
- Confirm the written consent for any Louisiana background check is obtained before the check, because R.S. 23:291(D)(1) conditions the immunity on it.
- Confirm that where an employer relies on the R.S. 23:291(E) shield, the file records whether the conviction is a crime of violence under R.S. 14:2(B) or a sex offense under R.S. 15:541, because those sit outside the shield.
- Confirm a Louisiana coverage statement gives both district numbers or neither. The statute states forty-one and creates a forty-second.
- Confirm the felony and misdemeanor classification for any Louisiana offense is taken from the punishment the law authorizes and not inferred from the statute number.
- Confirm the report does not disclose a medical marijuana payment obligation or its absence, since R.S. 40:1046(J) speaks to what an employer or carrier must pay rather than to what may be reported.
- Confirm no Louisiana negative is stated about automated hiring tools. The finding is a gap and not an answer.
Related states
What we do
Louisiana is two traps and a shield. The first trap is a bar on non-conviction arrests with no age limit, which a provider running the federal seven-year rule will breach by requesting rather than by reporting. The second is that felony and misdemeanor are defined by the punishment the law authorizes, so the classification cannot be read off a statute number, and the district count in the creating section is both forty-one and forty-two. The shield is written consent plus a background check, which under R.S. 23:291(D) buys an immunity that reaches failure-to-hire, invasion of privacy and third-party negligent hiring claims. A provider that knows all three is running Louisiana properly.
Sources
- R.S. 9:3571.1, credit reporting agency information and reports
- R.S. 9:3571.2, limitations on use of a consumer’s credit report
- R.S. 23:291, background checks, consent and immunity
- R.S. 23:291.1, certificate of employability
- R.S. 23:291.2, use of criminal history in hiring decisions
- R.S. 40:1046, therapeutic use of marijuana, employer and insurer obligations, and termination
- R.S. 13:312, courts of appeal, five circuits
- R.S. 13:477, judicial districts
- R.S. 13:1336, Orleans Parish criminal district court
- R.S. 13:1894, city court criminal jurisdiction
- R.S. 14:2, definitions of felony, misdemeanor and crime of violence
- Louisiana Civil Service Rule 22.4.1, criminal history inquiry
- Louisiana State Police, Bureau of Criminal Identification and Information, background check access
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.