ME · state guide

Maine background screening law

How the courts here are organized

Maine has 16 counties and a two-level trial court. The county is where the court sits, but it is not the unit of criminal search: the Superior Court sits in every county, and the Judicial Branch administers both trial courts through eight judicial regions and, for the District Court, divisions. The Judiciary describes the Superior Court in its own words: "The Maine Superior Court is Maine's trial court of general jurisdiction and is the only level of court where jury trials are available. Courts are located in each of Maine's eight judicial regions." The county count comes from the Judiciary's own Superior Court directory, which lists Androscoggin, Aroostook, Cumberland, Franklin, Hancock, Kennebec, Knox, Lincoln, Oxford, Penobscot, Piscataquis, Sagadahoc, Somerset, Waldo, Washington and York. That directory runs to 17 court locations because Aroostook County has two, Caribou and Houlton.

The Superior Court is the county-seated court of general jurisdiction. 4 M.R.S. § 105(1) gives it exclusive jurisdiction over "any and all matters that were, prior to January 1, 1930, within the jurisdiction of the Supreme Judicial Court or any of the Superior Courts", subject to the section 105(2) exceptions for matters vested in the District Court. Its size is fixed by statute as well: 4 M.R.S. § 101 provides that "The Superior Court, as established, consists of 18 justices and such Active Retired Justices as may be appointed and serving on the court, learned in the law and of sobriety of manners." The directory assigns each county to a numbered region: region 1 York; 2 Cumberland; 3 Androscoggin, Franklin and Oxford; 4 Kennebec and Somerset; 5 Penobscot and Piscataquis; 6 Knox, Lincoln, Sagadahoc and Waldo; 7 Hancock and Washington; 8 Aroostook, both locations.

The District Court is the tier below one year, and the line is drawn by exposure rather than by label. 4 M.R.S. § 165(1): "The District Court has jurisdiction and, except as provided in Title 29-A, section 2602, concurrent jurisdiction with the Superior Court of all crimes, including violation of any statute or a bylaw of a town, village corporation or local health officer and breach of the peace, for which the maximum term of imprisonment to which the defendant may be sentenced upon conviction of that crime is less than one year." Two consequences follow. First, the boundary between the two courts is a maximum term of imprisonment of less than one year, not the word felony or misdemeanor. Second, there is no municipal court in Maine: a violation of a town or village bylaw is prosecuted in the District Court.

Maine does not use the words felony and misdemeanor in its Criminal Code, and that matters for a product that maps its own labels onto state records. 17-A M.R.S. § 4(1): "Except for murder, all crimes defined by this Code are classified for purposes of sentencing as Class A, Class B, Class C, Class D and Class E crimes." The maxima that produce the practical split are in 17-A M.R.S. § 1604(1), which provides that "[u]nless a different maximum term of imprisonment is specified by statute" the maximum is 30 years for a Class A crime, 10 years for Class B, 5 years for Class C, less than one year for Class D and 6 months for Class E. Read against the one-year line in section 165(1), Class A, B and C offenses are the Superior Court tier and Class D and E offenses are the District Court tier. That mapping is a reading of the two sections together and is not a sentence in either statute.

The court line is not clean in practice. 4 M.R.S. § 165(3) gives the District Court original jurisdiction, concurrent with the Superior Court, to receive guilty pleas in cases whose maximum term is one year or more, other than murder, where the defendant waives indictment by grand jury and the right to a jury trial and indicates an intention to plead guilty, and when it does so it "possesses all of the powers of the Superior Court." A felony conviction can therefore appear as a District Court disposition. Venue follows the offense rather than the county: 4 M.R.S. § 155(1) provides that "[a] juvenile proceeding or criminal prosecution, including traffic, shall be brought in the division in which the offense charged took place", and section 155 governs the District Court.

The District Court's divisions do not track county lines, and section 153 says so in terms specific enough to affect a search. Aroostook County alone is divided into four: Western Aroostook, court at Fort Kent; Eastern Aroostook, at Caribou; Central Aroostook, at Presque Isle; and Southern Aroostook, at Houlton. Northern Cumberland "consists of all municipalities in the County of Cumberland not included within the divisions of Southern Cumberland and Bath-Brunswick, and consists of the municipalities of Brownfield, Denmark, Hiram, Fryeburg, Lovell, Sweden, Stow and Porter in the County of Oxford", with court at Bridgton, and Bath-Brunswick "consists of the entire County of Sagadahoc and the municipalities of Brunswick, Freeport and Harpswell in Cumberland County." A search keyed to Oxford County for the Fryeburg area is keyed to the wrong division, and the same is true of Brunswick and Harpswell in Cumberland County. For the District Court, the division and not the county is the unit of court administration. The list is also actively maintained: section 153(2) and (3) were amended by PL 2025, c. 436, and the York County divisions were consolidated into a single York division, court at Biddeford or another court facility in the division, by PL 2021, c. 633, which also repealed the former Northern Penobscot division in favor of "Northern and Central Penobscot".

The one thing this page cannot tell you is what a Maine court search reaches. Maine's public-facing court records position was not verified, because the Judicial Branch's court-records and public-access pages were not read, so nothing about docket availability, coverage or fees, statewide or per-court, free or paid, is stated here. What is stated is the structure, which is verified from statutory text and from the Judiciary's own Superior Court directory.

The state repository is a name-based product and it is not the same thing as a fingerprint-based criminal history. The Department of Public Safety, State Bureau of Identification operates an online public search that takes a name and a birth date and, in the operator's own words, "only releases information about crimes an individual has been convicted of as an adult and felonies he or she was adjudicated of as a juvenile". It costs $31, payable by credit card online or by check or money order through the mail, a notarized check for a visa or an international adoption is $41, and Maine organizations that run checks frequently "may subscribe to InforME for a discount on requesting criminal records". InforME is the State's online-services operator, so the public product is ordered through a contractor rather than directly from the bureau.

The bureau's completeness claim is narrower than it sounds, and the operator's own words carry the limit. "As the central repository for Criminal History Record Information (CHRI), SBI collects and links fingerprint-supported arrest information from law enforcement agencies, incarceration information from prison systems, and final disposition information from the courts to make a complete record of an individual through the justice process." The completeness is tied to fingerprint-supported arrest reporting, and the bureau reserves its word "complete" for the criminal justice audience: "Criminal Justice agencies can access an individual's complete CHR through their own system." The public product is the same repository queried by name, and the bureau does not describe that query as complete.

What a bureau response can and cannot carry follows from the two categories in 16 M.R.S. chapter 7. Public criminal history record information "may be disseminated by a Maine criminal justice agency to any person or public or private entity for any purpose", and section 704(1) adds that "[t]here is no time limitation on dissemination of public criminal history record information", so the public search scope the bureau describes is consistent with the statute. Confidential criminal history record information is a different matter. Section 705(1) allows a Maine criminal justice agency, "whether directly or through any intermediary", to disseminate it "only to" a closed list of recipients that does not include a private employer or a consumer reporting agency, and section 705(2) closes the remaining door: the agency "may not confirm the existence or nonexistence of confidential criminal history record information to any person or public or private entity that would not be eligible to receive the information itself." Section 707 makes intentional dissemination of a confidential record in violation of the chapter a Class E crime.

One operational duty sits on the agency rather than on the searcher, and it is worth knowing when reading a Maine record feed. Section 704(2), for public criminal history record information, and section 705(3), for confidential criminal history record information, each require a Maine criminal justice agency other than a court to query the Department of Public Safety, State Bureau of Identification, "before disseminating any public criminal history record information for a noncriminal justice purpose to ensure that the most up-to-date disposition information is being used", and a "noncriminal justice purpose" is defined as "a purpose other than for the administration of criminal justice or criminal justice agency employment". Employment screening is a noncriminal justice purpose by definition.

The routing consequence is that a Maine search has to say which court it covered and which geography it used. The county is the right unit for the Superior Court, which sits in every county. The District Court is administered through divisions that cross county lines, so a search keyed to Oxford County misses the Fryeburg area, which sits in Northern Cumberland, and a search keyed to Cumberland County misses Brunswick and Harpswell, which sit in Bath-Brunswick. A felony can also hold records in both courts, because section 165(3) lets the District Court receive a guilty plea in a case whose maximum term is one year or more and gives it all the powers of the Superior Court when it does.

The class label on a record is not always the class the offense was sentenced as. Section 1604(5)(A) elevates the sentencing class "one class higher" where the State pleads and proves that a Class B, C, D or E crime "was committed with the use of a dangerous weapon", and section 1604(5)(B) does the same on proof of two or more qualifying prior convictions. A Class D offense so elevated becomes a Class C offense with a five-year maximum and moves out of the District Court jurisdiction set by section 165(1), so a record that reads "Class D" on its face may not describe the offense as sentenced.

Correction runs through the bureau. 16 M.R.S. § 709 gives the subject, or the subject's attorney, a right to inspect, a right to request amendment or correction, a 15-day written-decision deadline on the request and a 30-day administrative appeal, and the bureau states the same route in its own words: "Individuals are allowed to challenge incomplete or inaccurate Criminal History Record Information through SBI."

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

What Maine law adds

Reporting limits at a glance

Every figure below is against Maine 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.

Maine shortens the dispute clock and the state provision is drafted to override the federal one. Section 1310-H(2) provides that "[n]otwithstanding any provision of federal law, ... the consumer reporting agency shall reinvestigate and record the current status of the information within 21 calendar days of notification of the dispute by the consumer, unless it has reasonable grounds to believe that the dispute by the consumer is frivolous." Where a dispute is running on a Maine consumer, the operative deadline is 21 calendar days and not the federal 30.

A second state duty attaches to the file rather than to the decision. Section 1310-H(1) bars a fee for a consumer report provided to a consumer on request once in any 12-month period and caps a 2nd or subsequent report in that period at $5, so a consumer asking for a copy of the file during a Maine dispute is entitled to the first one of the year free. Section 1310-H(2-A) adds a reinvestigation duty where documentation shows a debt results from economic abuse as defined in Title 19-A, section 4102(5), with removal of any reference to the debt where the determination is that it does.

Medical debt must not be on the report at all. Section 1310-H(4)(A), as amended by PL 2025, c. 201, section 5, provides that a consumer reporting agency "may not report medical debt on a consumer's consumer report and a medical creditor, debt collector or debt buyer may not report a consumer's medical debt to a consumer reporting agency." A credit component in a Maine file should be checked against that before any notice goes out.

A sealed conviction in the file is the sharpest problem on this page, and it is a problem for the disseminator rather than for the agency. Section 2269 is addressed to "A person", so a screening company that intentionally disseminates a sealed conviction record knowing the dissemination to be unlawful is within the offense, which is a Class E crime. Section 2265 makes the sealed conviction confidential "notwithstanding Title 16, section 704", so a search result that reads as publicly disseminable is not necessarily so.

Expect the applicant to deny a sealed conviction, and do not treat the denial as dishonesty. Section 2266 lets a person whose conviction is sealed respond to inquiries from anyone other than a criminal justice agency or an entity authorized under section 2265 "by not disclosing the existence of the eligible criminal conviction without being subject to any sanctions under the laws of this State", and the second sentence protects the person against the false-statement offenses at 17-A M.R.S. sections 451, 452 and 453 in that situation. A letter that treats the denial as a discrepancy is relying on a record the person is entitled to withhold.

A confidential non-conviction record raises the mirror-image problem, and the check is on the source rather than on the letter. Section 705(1) confines a Maine criminal justice agency, "whether directly or through any intermediary", to a closed recipient list, section 705(2) bars the agency from confirming the existence or nonexistence of such a record to anyone who could not receive it, and section 707 makes intentional dissemination in violation of the chapter a Class E crime. If a report carries a non-conviction record from a Maine court or agency, the question to answer before the notice goes out is which route released it.

Maine adds no adverse-action notice duty of its own for a criminal-history report. The additional state-specific provisions in chapter 209-B are the disclosure fee rule, the 21-day clock, the economic-abuse reinvestigation, the medical-debt ban and the safe harbor, and none of them is a notice requirement. The federal sequence is the whole of the procedural requirement unless a credit component brings section 1310-H(1) and section 1310-H(2-A) into play.

Screening in Maine: what your process needs

• Read 26 M.R.S. § 600-A before the application form is drafted. The question is barred on the initial employee application form, and section 600-A(2)(B) also reaches an advertisement and any specification made before the person is determined otherwise qualified.
• Do not look for a size threshold, and check the State Government carve-out rather than assuming one. Section 600-A(1)(B) reaches "a person in this State who employs individuals", with no employee count and no revenue test, and municipalities and political subdivisions are expressly inside the definition. The only exclusion is an employer of a person holding a position in the legislative, executive or judicial branch of State Government or with a quasi-independent state entity or public instrumentality.
• Attach the interview duty to any interview question. Section 600-A(3) requires the employer that inquires to "afford to the prospective employee the opportunity to explain the information and the circumstances regarding any convictions, including post-conviction rehabilitation", and the section 600-A(4) exceptions do not excuse that duty, because they are captioned as exceptions for the initial application form.
• Keep an exception narrow if one is claimed. Both branches of section 600-A(4) require a federal or state law, regulation or rule to create the disqualification or the obligation, and both limit the permitted questions to the types of criminal offenses creating it. There is no safety-sensitive exception an employer can invoke on its own judgment.
• Do not assume the exception covers the same subject matter as the prohibition. The prohibition uses a definition reaching summonses and arrests and formal criminal charges, while section 600-A(4) speaks only of "criminal convictions".
• Route a complaint to the Department of Labor. Section 600-A(5) is enforced through section 626-A, which carries a fine of $100 to $500 for each violation, and there is no private right of action for a violation of section 600-A. The Maine Human Rights Commission is not the enforcement route.
• Do not report a confidential non-conviction record, and do not ask a Maine agency to confirm one. Section 705(1) confines a Maine criminal justice agency to a closed recipient list that does not include a private employer or a consumer reporting agency, and section 705(2) bars it from confirming the existence or nonexistence of such a record to anyone who could not receive it. Section 707 makes intentional dissemination in violation of the chapter a Class E crime.
• Treat a sealed conviction as off limits for dissemination. Section 2269 is addressed to "A person", not to an agency, and it is a Class E crime to intentionally disseminate sealed criminal history record information relating to a criminal conviction knowing the dissemination to violate section 2265 or section 2268.
• Do not treat a denial of a sealed conviction as dishonesty. Section 2266 lets the person respond to inquiries from anyone other than a criminal justice agency or an entity authorized under section 2265 by not disclosing the conviction, without sanctions under the laws of Maine, and the second sentence protects the person against the false-statement offenses at 17-A M.R.S. sections 451, 452 and 453 in that situation.
• Run a Maine dispute on the Maine clock. Section 1310-H(2) requires reinvestigation and recording of the current status within 21 calendar days of the consumer's notification, expressly notwithstanding federal law, so the 30-day federal period is not the operative one.
• Do not charge for the first report of the year, and keep a cap of $5 in mind for the rest. Section 1310-H(1) bars a fee for a consumer report provided to a consumer on request once in any 12-month period and caps a 2nd or subsequent report in that period at $5.
• Keep medical debt off the report. Section 1310-H(4)(A) provides that a consumer reporting agency "may not report medical debt on a consumer's consumer report", and the ban also runs against a medical creditor, debt collector or debt buyer reporting to an agency.
• Check the safe harbor before relying on a procedure. Section 1310-H(3) removes liability where the person shows by a preponderance of the evidence that at the time of the alleged violation it maintained reasonable procedures to ensure compliance.
• Check the registration question before assuming it does not apply. Section 1310-A(1)(G) reaches a consumer reporting agency "located in this State or serving users within this State", the vehicle is the nationwide mortgage licensing system and registry, and the fees the Bureau states it charges are $100 to apply, $100 to renew and $25 per change of legal name, address or tradename.
• Ask Maine counsel about the professional investigator license before treating the section 8104(2)(D) exception as covering a criminal-records product, and read section 8104(2)(M) carefully if the company also contacts former employers or references, because that exception requires the person to be solely engaged in retrieval from an online source or database and not to question individuals.
• Say which court and which geography answered a Maine search. The Superior Court sits in every county, but the District Court is administered through divisions that cross county lines, so a search keyed to Oxford County misses Fryeburg and a search keyed to Cumberland County misses Brunswick and Harpswell. A felony can also hold a record in both courts under section 165(3).
• Read the class label with care. Section 1604(5) can elevate the sentencing class where a dangerous weapon was used or where there are two or more qualifying prior convictions, so a record that reads "Class D" on its face may not describe the offense as sentenced.
• Do not publish a Maine statewide docket claim. Nothing about docket availability, coverage or fees, statewide or per-court, free or paid, was verified in this research, so a Maine court search is not described in those terms anywhere on this page.
• Do not read the AI act into hiring. 10 M.R.S. § 1500-DD regulates a chatbot in trade and commerce with a consumer and is enforced as an unfair trade practice. It creates no duty of any kind toward a candidate or an applicant.

Related states

• New Hampshire. New Hampshire authorizes consumer reporting agencies by name to obtain state criminal conviction records for employment screening and designates the state police record the official certified source for employment and licensing purposes, while forbidding the division from requiring notarization. Its seven-year cap on convictions is switched off by a $20,000 salary figure carried from 1971.
• Massachusetts. Massachusetts holds its criminal disposition file with the Commissioner of Probation rather than with the courts that produced it, and releases it only through a registration that expires every two calendar years and requires retraining. Its regulation also writes the federal $75,000 employment figure into state law, so how much record a provider may pass to an employer turns on the salary of the job.
• New York. New York sets its salary threshold at $25,000, so the seven-year limit reaches jobs federal law exempts, and its bar on reporting arrests has no time limit attached to it.

What we do

Maine regulates the application form and the interview separately. 26 M.R.S. § 600-A bars the criminal history question on the initial application form, in an advertisement and in any specification made before the otherwise-qualified determination, permits it at the interview or once the person is otherwise qualified, and requires an employer that asks to afford an opportunity to explain. The definition of "Employer" has no size threshold at all and reaches municipalities, and the exceptions are law-driven and limited to the offenses creating the disqualification. Two dissemination regimes sit behind that: 16 M.R.S. chapter 7 makes a defined class of non-conviction records confidential and bars a Maine criminal justice agency from even confirming that one exists, while 15 M.R.S. § 2269 makes intentional dissemination of a sealed conviction a Class E crime for "A person", which reaches a screening company directly. The state repository is a name-and-date-of-birth product run by the State Bureau of Identification for $31, and the courts are two levels on two geographies, the county for the Superior Court and the judicial division for the District Court. Our Maine work keeps the form, the interview and the decision apart, states which court and which division answered a search, and treats a sealed conviction and a confidential non-conviction record as records the report should not carry. If your current vendor asks the question on the form, or treats the state repository as a complete criminal history, this is where that shows.

Sources

• Maine Judicial Branch, Superior Court directory, with the court's own description of its jurisdiction and the eight judicial regions, read through a Wayback capture because the live host refused connections
• 4 M.R.S. § 101, composition of the Superior Court
• 4 M.R.S. § 105, jurisdiction of the Superior Court, including the 1930 carve-out at (1)
• 4 M.R.S. § 153, the District Court divisions, including the divisions that cross county lines
• 4 M.R.S. ch. 5, venue in the division where the offense charged took place, at § 155(1)
• 4 M.R.S. § 165, District Court jurisdiction, the one-year line at (1) and the guilty-plea jurisdiction at (3)
• 17-A M.R.S. § 4, the Class A to Class E sentencing classification
• 17-A M.R.S. § 1604, maximum terms of imprisonment, including the one-class elevation at (5)
• 10 M.R.S. ch. 209-B, the Maine Fair Credit Reporting Act, chapter contents
• 10 M.R.S. § 1310-H, additional state-specific provisions: the free annual disclosure and $5 cap, the 21-day clock, the economic-abuse reinvestigation, the medical-debt ban and the safe harbor
• 10 M.R.S. § 1310-C, civil liability for willful noncompliance, including the treble-damages term
• 10 M.R.S. § 1310-A, administrative enforcement, including registration through the nationwide mortgage licensing system and registry at (1)(G)
• 10 M.R.S. ch. 210, the repealed predecessor Fair Credit Reporting Act, every section marked as repealed
• Bureau of Consumer Credit Protection Rule Ch. 704, registration and renewal fees for consumer reporting agencies through the NMLS, effective June 25, 2023
• Bureau of Consumer Credit Protection, consumer reporting licensing page, with the trigger in the Bureau's own words and the fees it states it charges
• 26 M.R.S. § 600-A, criminal history record information and the employment application, including the definition of "Employer" at (1)(B)
• 26 M.R.S. § 626-A, the fine of $100 to $500 per violation, which is the enforcement route for § 600-A
• 5 M.R.S. § 4572, unlawful employment discrimination, checked for a criminal-history provision
• 16 M.R.S. ch. 7, the Criminal History Record Information Act, chapter contents
• 16 M.R.S. § 703, definitions, including the twelve confidential categories at (2)
• 16 M.R.S. § 704, dissemination of public criminal history record information and the no-time-limitation sentence
• 16 M.R.S. § 705, dissemination of confidential criminal history record information, including the no-confirmation rule at (2)
• 16 M.R.S. § 707, unlawful dissemination of confidential criminal history record information, a Class E crime
• 15 M.R.S. § 2265, effect of a sealing order, including the closed list of additional recipients
• 15 M.R.S. § 2266, the right of a person whose conviction is sealed to withhold it
• 15 M.R.S. § 2268, dissemination of a conviction sealed under the former chapter 310
• 15 M.R.S. § 2269, unlawful dissemination of sealed records, the offense addressed to "A person"
• 15 M.R.S. § 2262-A, the mandatory sealing of certain convictions for engaging in prostitution
• 28-B M.R.S. § 112, employment policies under the adult-use cannabis law
• 22 M.R.S. § 2430-C, school, employer or landlord may not discriminate, at (3)
• 22 M.R.S. § 2426, the task-under-the-influence limit in the medical cannabis chapter
• 26 M.R.S. § 685, substance use testing, including the hiring factors at (2)(A) and the criminal-proceeding bar at (3)(B)
• 10 M.R.S. § 1500-DD, communications with consumers via artificial intelligence, enacted by PL 2025, c. 294
• 32 M.R.S. § 8103, definitions of private investigation at (4-A) and professional investigator at (5)
• 32 M.R.S. § 8104, the licensing requirement and its exceptions, including the credit reporting exception at (2)(D) and the retrieval-only exception at (2)(M)
• 32 M.R.S. § 8111, the bond and insurance requirements for a professional investigator license
• 32 M.R.S. § 8122, the duty to provide proof of a valid license to a client
• 10 M.R.S. chapter list, reviewed for a data-broker chapter
• 32 M.R.S. chapter list, reviewed for a data-broker chapter
• 10 M.R.S. ch. 1055, marketing and data collection practices, all four sections marked as repealed
• Maine Department of Public Safety, State Bureau of Identification, criminal history record repository page: the $31 name-and-date-of-birth public search, its scope, the fingerprint-supported completeness claim and the InforME ordering channel. Read on 2026-09-23 from an archived capture; the live host refused this session's connections, so no URL is given.
• Route note: all Maine statutory text was read on 2026-09-23 from legislature.maine.gov, which answered normally and serves plain server-rendered HTML. The Judicial Branch hosts did not: www.courts.maine.gov and ecourts.maine.gov failed at TCP connect under curl with a full browser header set and under a browser-capable fetch, and publicportal.courts.maine.gov answered HTTP 200 with an Imperva bot-block page rather than content, so the Maine court-records and public-access pages were not read and nothing about docket availability, coverage or fees is stated on this page. Wayback replay returned HTTP 429 by the time it was tried. The title-level table-of-contents paths are the working ones for the Revisor: the bare title indexes return HTTP 403 and the short form returns 404.

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.