ND · state guide

North Dakota background screening law

How the courts here are organized

North Dakota runs a single unified court system and the number of districts in it is not in the Century Code. Article VI, § 1 vests the judicial power "in a unified judicial system consisting of a supreme court, a district court, and such other courts as may be provided by law", and § 27-01-01 names the courts of justice as "1. The supreme court; 2. The district courts; and 3. Such other courts as are or may be created by law for cities. Of these the supreme court and the district courts are courts of record." Three tiers, then, and only two of them were courts of record until recently.

The district count is delegated rather than fixed, and that matters to how the fact is cited. Article VI, § 9 provides that "The state shall be divided into judicial districts by order of the supreme court", and § 27-05-01 provides that "The judicial districts in this state and the number of judges in each of the judicial districts are as designated by rule of the supreme court." There is no section of the code that states a number, so a page that cites one for the count is citing something that does not say it. The court system states it instead, in its own words: "Under the authority granted to the Supreme Court in Article VI, Section 3 of the Constitution of North Dakota, the court has organized the district courts into eight judicial districts operating within four administrative units." That sentence, and not a statute, is where the count on this page comes from.

The eight districts are East Central, North Central, Northeast, Northeast Central, Northwest, South Central, Southeast and Southwest. They are not a stable historical set, and the district pages record the changes. North Central was "Created in 2013 to be effective January 1, 2014", when "Burke, Mountrail and Ward counties were transferred to the new North Central Judicial District." The Southeast page records three transfers in: "In 1993, Wells County was transferred to this district from the South Central Judicial District", "In 2000, Griggs County was transferred to this district from the Northeast Central Judicial District", and "In 2014, Kidder, Logan and McIntosh counties were transferred to this district from the South Central Judicial District." A county therefore does not map to a fixed district across time, which is worth knowing before a search is scoped by district rather than by county.

County courts no longer exist and the abolition is dated. Section 27-05-00.1(1) provides that "Following the completion on January 1, 1995, of the terms of the judges of all county courts, the county court and office of judge of the county court in each county are abolished", and subsection 4 gives the routing rule: "All case files, untried cases, or any other unfinished business of each county court abolished pursuant to subsection 1 must be considered case files, untried cases, and other unfinished business of the district court of the judicial district in which that county is located." A pre-1995 county court matter is a district court matter now, in the district that holds the county.

Municipal courts exist, are part of the unified system, and change status on 1 July 2026. Section 40-18.1-01(1) provides that a city governing body "may, by ordinance or resolution, establish a municipal court which is a part of the unified judicial system of this state", and § 40-18.1-02(1) gives the court jurisdiction "to hear, try, and determine offenses against the ordinances of any city served by the court." Subsection 40-18.1-01(8) then provides that "Beginning July 1, 2026, the municipal court is a court of record." The older chapter 40-18, "Municipal Judges", is repealed and chapter 40-18.1, "Municipal Courts", replaced it, which is a common source of the impression that municipal courts are being wound up. They are not: they are being brought into the record.

The directory counts are worth stating precisely because they are counts rather than rules. The court system's Court Locations page carries a county list and a municipal court list, and the municipal list names 77 courts from Ashley to Zap against 53 counties. The county figure is the number of counties in the state and is a check that the list is complete; the municipal figure is a directory count and this page carries it as one. What the directory does not supply is what a commercial search of either tier costs or covers, and that gap is named in `pending` rather than estimated here.

The repository gate is a single sentence and it decides how a North Dakota answer has to be sourced. Section 12-60-16.6 provides that "Only the bureau may disseminate a criminal history record to parties not described in section 12-60-16.5", and then conditions the dissemination on four things: that the record "has not been purged or sealed"; that the information "is of a conviction, including a conviction for violating section 12.1-20-03, 12.1-20-03.1, 12.1-20-04, 12.1-20-06.1, or 12.1-20-11 notwithstanding any disposition following a deferred imposition of sentence; or the criminal history record information is of a reportable event occurring within three years preceding the request"; that the request is written and carries the requester's name plus either biometric data or the subject's name with two identifiers; and that the identifying information "does not match the record of more than one individual." The three-year window in the second condition is the only lookback on this page, and it is a window on dissemination rather than a limit on reporting.

The administrative rule underneath the section is the operational half and it is not in the Century Code. NDAC 10-13-05-01 provides that "Criminal justice agencies receiving requests for criminal history record information from noncriminal justice sources shall refer those requests to the bureau. Only the bureau may disseminate criminal history record information for noncriminal justice purposes." NDAC 10-13-05-02 then requires the bureau to "provide forms and establish and publish procedures for noncriminal justice entities to acquire criminal history record information", and NDAC 10-13-05-03 requires payment to accompany a request, made payable to the "Attorney General's Office", adding that "Any request that does not include the statutory fee will not be processed and will be returned to the requesting party." A consumer reporting agency is a noncriminal justice entity, so the channel exists by rule. What the bureau does with a commercial request in practice, and whether it treats a screening firm as a permitted requester in every case or only in the vulnerable-adult context, was not established, and it is named in `pending`.

The fee schedule is set by statute and not by the bureau. Section 12-60-16.9 provides that "The bureau shall impose a fee of fifteen dollars for each state record check", with a five dollar rate for "a nonprofit organization that is organized and operated in this state exclusively for charitable purposes for the exclusive benefit of minors" and the same five dollars for a check "conducted on a volunteer providing services for a nonprofit organization that is organized and operated in this state exclusively for charitable purposes for the exclusive benefit of vulnerable elderly adults." Biometric processing for each nationwide check is fifteen dollars, and "The bureau shall waive the fees for any criminal justice agency or court."

The record subject is inside the transaction, and the rule that carries that is a set of administrative provisions rather than one section. Section 12-60-16.8 requires that, unless the request carried the subject's signed authorization on bureau forms, "the bureau shall mail notice of that dissemination to the record subject at the last known address of the record subject." Chapter 10-13-07 then gives the subject an inspection right on written request and verified identity, with a hard practical limit at 10-13-07-05: "A request for inspection of a criminal history record must be made in person at a criminal justice agency by the record subject or an authorized representative of the record subject. Requests made by mail or any other means from out-of-state may not be processed by the receiving agency or the bureau." Out-of-state inspection is therefore not available by mail. NDAC 10-13-07-08 limits copies as well: an inspecting individual "may make notes of the information in the record but may not receive a copy of the record unless the record subject intends to challenge the information in the record."

A correction runs back through everyone who received the record. NDAC 10-13-07-10 requires the originating agency to "notify the record subject, in writing, of the results of the review within twenty working days of the receipt of the challenge", and 10-13-07-12 provides that where entries are corrected "the originating agency shall notify all criminal justice and noncriminal justice agencies that have received the erroneous information within the year preceding the challenge of the corrections." That last duty reaches noncriminal justice agencies, which is the category a consumer reporting agency occupies, and it is the provision to check when a corrected record has already been reported to an employer. NDAC 10-13-05-04 adds that the bureau must "maintain a transaction log of all requests for criminal history record checks" for "a minimum of three years", recording in a prohibited-dissemination case "the reason for not disseminating criminal history record information."

Closing a court record does not by itself reach the bureau, and the statute defining the terms says so. Section 12-60.1-01(4) provides that "A criminal record does not include criminal history record information as defined in subsection 5 of section 12-60-16.1 or criminal justice data information maintained in the criminal justice data information sharing system under section 54-12-34." On the BCI side the general rule is at NDAC 10-13-11-01: "Criminal history records, or portions thereof, may be purged or sealed only when expressly authorized by state or federal law and pursuant to a court order from a court of competent jurisdiction." A search product therefore has to hold two facts separately: the court record may be closed while the bureau record is not, and the two are reached by different requests.

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

What North Dakota law adds

Reporting limits at a glance

Every figure below is against North Dakota 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.

North Dakota adds nothing to that sequence for a criminal-history report. No state provision read for this page requires a state pre-adverse notice, a state summary of rights, a state waiting period or a state dispute route for a conviction report. The state duties that do exist attach to the record rather than to the decision, which means a North Dakota file has to be right about the record and not only about the letter.

The record subject is notified at dissemination rather than at the decision. Section 12-60-16.8 provides that "unless the request was accompanied by an authorization on forms prescribed by the bureau and signed by the record subject, the bureau shall mail notice of that dissemination to the record subject at the last known address of the record subject." A bureau-sourced item in a report may therefore already have been notified to the subject before the employer has decided anything, and where the request carried the subject's signed authorization on bureau forms it will not have been. That is a fact about the source of the item and it belongs in the file.

A corrected record has to reach everyone who received it. NDAC 10-13-07-12 requires the originating agency, once entries are corrected, to notify "all criminal justice and noncriminal justice agencies that have received the erroneous information within the year preceding the challenge of the corrections." The duty is on the agency rather than on the screener, but the practical consequence for an adverse-action file is that a dispute about accuracy may be answered by a correction that the agency is obliged to propagate, and the twenty working day window at NDAC 10-13-07-10 is the clock the agency is on.

Section 12-60.1-04(8) cuts against a clean letter where a record was sealed. The order itself must state that the petitioner "is sufficiently rehabilitated but is subject to the provisions of section 12.1-33-02.1, and shall release the information when an entity has a statutory obligation to conduct a criminal history background check." Where an employer is under such a statutory obligation, a sealed record is not a bar to its release, and a letter that treats a sealing order as an absolute exclusion is describing something the order does not say. Where the employer is not under such an obligation, the sealing order and the "Closed" access list at § 12-60.1-01(1) are the provisions to check.

One penal provision runs at a publisher rather than at a repository and it is worth reading before any letter that offers to remove a record. Section 12-60-16.12 makes a person civilly liable to an individual in the amount of "five hundred dollars or actual damages, whichever is greater, plus reasonable attorney's fees and court costs" where that person disseminates, publishes or maintains the individual's criminal history record information "which pertains to that individual's charge or arrest for a criminal offense", and "solicits, requests, or accepts money or other thing of value for removing the criminal history record information." A willful violation of the reporting or disseminating provisions is a class A misdemeanor under § 12-60-16.10.

The state overlay for a North Dakota file is therefore thin and specific: the public-sector inquiry rule at § 12.1-33-02.2 for public employers and their vendors, the bureau gate at § 12-60-16.6 and NDAC 10-13-05-01 for anything sourced from the state repository, the mandatory bureau step at § 12-60-16.11 for vulnerable-adult care screening, and the sealing and closure regime at chapter 12-60.1 for anything sourced from a court. There is no state adverse-action notice duty, no state lookback rule and no state private-sector inquiry rule, and that absence is stated here as a finding about the instruments read rather than as a claim about the state.

Screening in North Dakota: what your process needs

• Do not apply a ban-the-box rule to a North Dakota private employer, because there is none, and cite what does exist correctly. Section 12.1-33-02.2(1) binds a "public employer", defined at subsection 4 as the state, a county or city government, or an instrumentality or agency of one, including a park district and excluding a school district. The section sits in Title 12.1, "Rights of Convicts", rather than in a Title 54 provision: it was created by 2019 Session Laws chapter 121, House Bill No. 1282, filed 13 March 2019 with no emergency clause, and it took effect on 1 August 2019 under N.D. Const. art. IV, § 13. The effective date is derived and should be described as derived.
• If the client is a public employer, stop the criminal history question until the applicant "has been selected for an interview by the employer." The rule has two limbs, on inquiring and on considering, so a process that never asks but screens on a record before that point is inside the prohibition too.
• Check the two public-sector exemptions before assuming the rule applies. Section 12.1-33-02.2(2) exempts the department of corrections and rehabilitation and any public employer with a statutory duty to conduct a check or to take a potential employee's criminal history into consideration during hiring.
• Use the subsection 3 notice where a position genuinely disqualifies on a particular history. Telling an applicant that "law or the employer's policy will disqualify an individual with a particular criminal history background from employment in particular positions" is permitted before the interview, and it is about stating the rule rather than asking the question.
• Route every state criminal history request to the Bureau of Criminal Investigation. Section 12-60-16.6 provides that "Only the bureau may disseminate a criminal history record to parties not described in section 12-60-16.5", and NDAC 10-13-05-01 directs a criminal justice agency receiving a request from a noncriminal justice source to refer it to the bureau rather than answer it.
• Expect the § 12-60-16.6 conditions to be checked one by one. The record must not be purged or sealed; it must be a conviction, including one with a deferred imposition, or a reportable event within three years preceding the request; the request must be written and carry the requester's name plus either biometric data or the subject's name with two identifiers; and the identifying information must not match more than one individual.
• Do not read § 12-60-16.6 as a restraint on the requester. Its closing sentence provides that "This section does not prohibit the disclosure of a criminal history record by the requester or other persons after the dissemination of the record by the bureau to the requester." The gate governs the bureau's release, not what happens downstream.
• Do not describe a fingerprint check as available on request. Section 12-60-24(1)(c) makes the bureau the sole recipient of federal fingerprint responses, and § 12-60-24(2) lists the entities entitled to a statewide and nationwide check. The list runs from a. to hhh. and contains no general private-employer or consumer-reporting entry.
• Use the bureau step where the screening is for vulnerable-adult care. Section 12-60-16.11 requires any person offering criminal background checks for compensation for that purpose to "utilize the bureau of criminal investigation statewide criminal history database in addition to any other compiled information", and to pay the § 12-60-16.9 fees.
• Check the fee and the payment terms before a request goes out. NDAC 10-13-05-03 requires payment in the § 12-60-16.9 amount to accompany the request, made payable to the "Attorney General's Office", and provides that "Any request that does not include the statutory fee will not be processed and will be returned to the requesting party."
• Tell an out-of-state subject how to inspect their own record, because the rule is narrow. NDAC 10-13-07-05 requires inspection to be "in person at a criminal justice agency by the record subject or an authorized representative", and provides that requests "made by mail or any other means from out-of-state may not be processed by the receiving agency or the bureau." NDAC 10-13-07-08 limits copies to the portions under challenge.
• Expect the subject to have been notified directly where the record came from the bureau. Section 12-60-16.8 requires the bureau to mail notice of the dissemination to the record subject unless the request carried the subject's signed authorization on bureau forms.
• Do not treat a sealing order as a uniform bar. Section 12-60.1-04(8) requires the order to release the information "when an entity has a statutory obligation to conduct a criminal history background check", and the order must state that the petitioner remains subject to § 12.1-33-02.1. Ask what the order says rather than assuming.
• Scope a court search to the courts that actually exist. North Dakota is a unified system with no county trial courts since 1 January 1995, county court files moved to the district court holding the county, and municipal courts are part of the unified system and become courts of record on 1 July 2026.
• Do not cite a statute for the number of judicial districts. Article VI, § 9 and § 27-05-01 both delegate the count to supreme court rule, and the eight-district figure comes from the court system's own description of how it has organized itself.
• Do not refuse to hire a registered medical cannabis patient on the basis of status alone where the decision-maker is a court or a professional regulator, and do not extend that reasoning to a private employer. Section 19-24.1-32(1) runs to "a court or occupational or professional regulating entity", and § 19-24.1-34(2) preserves employer discipline for workplace possession, for working under the influence, and for working with marijuana in the system.

Related states

• 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.
• Montana. Montana caps criminal record reporting at seven years and the cap reaches convictions, with no salary exemption anywhere in the statute and no exceptions subsection at all, so an old conviction is not reportable here at any salary. It also names marijuana in its off-duty lawful-product protection, and it splits the state’s criminal record into a restricted stream and an unrestricted one in which the courts sit.
• Nebraska. Nebraska releases its state criminal history to anyone who pays the fee, with interest in the subject demonstrated by paying it, so a name-based Nebraska check needs no authorization. Its twelve judicial districts are composed differently for district courts and for county courts, which makes the district number an unstable identifier, and its employer-screening provision governs reference disclosures on written consent rather than reports.

What we do

North Dakota is a state where the law is thin and the record system is not, and the second half is the part that shapes a search. There is exactly one criminal-record inquiry restriction in the Century Code, at § 12.1-33-02.2, it binds public employers only, and it lifts when an applicant is selected for an interview rather than at a conditional offer. Private employers are unregulated on the question, which means a screening program here has to be built on the federal floor and on the client's own policy rather than on a state rule. The state criminal history sits in the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, § 12-60-16.6 makes the bureau the only disseminator to a party outside the criminal justice list, and NDAC 10-13-05-01 routes every agency request from a noncriminal justice source to the same place, so a firm reaches the record through the bureau or not at all. The fingerprint channel at § 12-60-24 is a different and closed list, and § 12-60-16.11 makes the bureau step mandatory for vulnerable-adult care screening. Nonconvictions close automatically sixty-one days after an order entered on or after 1 August 2025, the pre-2025 backlog closes by petition with no filing fee, and § 12-60.1-04(8) requires the sealing order itself to release the record where an employer has a statutory duty to check, which is the provision most likely to be missed by a letter that treats a sealing order as absolute. Our North Dakota work keeps the public-sector interview trigger apart from the private-sector position, states whether an answer came from the bureau or from a court, and reads the sealing order rather than assuming what it says. If your current vendor applies a private-sector ban-the-box here, or treats a bureau check as a fingerprinted national search on request, this is where that shows.

Sources

• N.D.C.C. ch. 12.1-33, Rights of Convicts, including § 12.1-33-02.1 on state licensure and § 12.1-33-02.2 on public employment
• N.D.C.C. ch. 12-60, Criminal History Record Information, including the dissemination gate at § 12-60-16.6, the subject notice at § 12-60-16.8, the fee schedule at § 12-60-16.9, the vulnerable-adult duty at § 12-60-16.11 and the fingerprint list at § 12-60-24
• N.D.C.C. ch. 12-60.1, Sealing Criminal Records, including the automatic closure at § 12-60.1-05 and the statutory-check release at § 12-60.1-04(8)
• N.D.C.C. ch. 19-24.1, the Compassionate Care Act, including the patient protection at § 19-24.1-32 and the employer provision at § 19-24.1-34
• N.D.C.C. ch. 14-02.4, the North Dakota Human Rights Act, and the enumerated protected classes at § 14-02.4-02(6) and § 14-02.4-03(1)
• N.D.C.C. ch. 27-01 and ch. 27-05, the courts of justice and the judicial districts, including the abolition of the county courts at § 27-05-00.1
• N.D.C.C. ch. 40-18.1, Municipal Courts, including the establishment power at § 40-18.1-01(1) and the court-of-record date at § 40-18.1-01(8)
• N.D.C.C. ch. 51-33, the consumer security freeze chapter, including the consumer reporting agency definition, the exemption at § 51-33-06(9), the fee cap at § 51-33-08, the confirmation duty at § 51-33-09 and the civil penalty at § 51-33-13
• N.D. Admin. Code ch. 10-13-05, Disseminating Criminal History Record Information, including the referral rule at 10-13-05-01, the bureau forms duty at 10-13-05-02, the fee terms at 10-13-05-03 and the dissemination log at 10-13-05-04
• N.D. Admin. Code ch. 10-13-07, Inspection and Challenge of Criminal History Record Information by a Record Subject, including the in-person limit at 10-13-07-05, the copy restriction at 10-13-07-08, the twenty working day window at 10-13-07-10 and the notification of corrections at 10-13-07-12
• N.D. Admin. Code ch. 10-13-11, purge and seal authority, at 10-13-11-01
• North Dakota Legislative Assembly, 2019 Session Laws, sections affected table, which identifies House Bill No. 1282 as 2019 Session Laws chapter 121; the chapter text is in the Senate and House concurrent resolutions and chapters volume
• North Dakota Legislative Council, Measures Before the Voters, the record of initiative, referendum and constitutional measure outcomes from 1914 onward, read in raw text mode because the layout extraction misaligns the vote columns
• North Dakota Court System, District Court and Court Locations pages, read through Internet Archive regular replay of a 2026-01-01 capture, which is where the eight judicial districts and the four administrative units are stated in the court system's own words
• Route note: ndlegis.gov answered live and supplied every statutory and administrative rule quotation on this page. The chapter URL convention is /cencode/t<TITLE>c<CHAPTER>.pdf with dots replaced by dashes, so chapter 12-60.1 is t12c60-1.pdf and chapter 14-02.4 is t14c02-4.pdf; the undashed forms return HTTP 300 with a body naming the correct file, and ndlegis.gov/acencode/ returns a real 404, checked against a deliberately wrong path on the same host. ndcourts.gov returns HTTP 403 "Blocked" on every path and header set tried, so the court-structure facts were read through Internet Archive regular replay of a 2026-01-01 capture. The 2019 session law was located through the Legislative Assembly's own sections affected table rather than through the bill index, which returned HTTP 403. No North Dakota case law was read, because the case-law mirrors are blocked from this environment.

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.