PA · state guide

Pennsylvania background screening law

How the courts here are organized

Pennsylvania runs 67 counties through 60 judicial districts, and the two numbers are not the same because several districts carry more than one county and one carries only part of one. The Courts of Common Pleas sit in every county and are both the felony tier and the misdemeanor tier: there is no separate limited-jurisdiction court of record for criminal cases the way many states have. That makes the county the unit of search for anything above a summary offense, and it makes the clerk of the Courts of Common Pleas in each county the record holder.

Below the Common Pleas sits the minor judiciary, and it is not one court. Magisterial district judges sit across the state and handle summary and preliminary matters, so a criminal matter commonly begins there and only the more serious charges are held for court. Philadelphia is different in kind: its minor judiciary is the Philadelphia Municipal Court, not a bench of district judges, and Pittsburgh has its own Pittsburgh Municipal Court. The practical consequence is that the entry point into a Pennsylvania criminal matter varies by county, and a records pipeline that assumes one structure will handle Philadelphia incorrectly.

The docket number is where a Pennsylvania pipeline most often goes wrong. The Common Pleas criminal docket form is CP-51-CR-####-YYYY, and the two digits after CP are a county code, not the judicial district number. Philadelphia is 51. Those two numbering systems run in parallel and neither is obviously wrong on its face, so a vendor that reads that segment as a district identifier will not fail loudly. It will file Philadelphia records under the wrong key, or look for them under a key that returns nothing, and the output will look like a coverage gap rather than a mapping error.

One boundary matters more than the structure itself. 18 Pa.C.S. § 9104(a)(2) provides that nothing in Chapter 91 applies to "Any documents, records or indices prepared or maintained by or filed in any court of this Commonwealth, including but not limited to the minor judiciary." Pennsylvania's criminal history statute therefore does not reach court dockets. Its accuracy, completeness, security and individual-access provisions attach to the State Police repository, and the dockets that a court search produces sit outside the chapter entirely.

So a Pennsylvania answer comes from one of two places, and they are governed by different law. A repository response is a State Police record built from what law enforcement agencies submitted to it, and it is governed by Chapter 91 down to the notice and damages provisions. A court search is a clerk-level record for one county, authoritative for that county and silent about the other 66, and Chapter 91 does not apply to it. Neither is a Pennsylvania statewide criminal history, and the difference is the first thing an adverse-action letter needs to get right.

The repository's scope limit is stated by the State Police in their own words and it is narrower than a reader expects: "All online and mail-in requests are checked against Pennsylvania law enforcement agency criminal history records only, not federal records." A PATCH result is a Pennsylvania law enforcement record. It is not a national check, it does not carry an out-of-state conviction, and it does not carry a federal one. An employer comparing a PATCH response against a multi-state product is comparing two different questions.

What the State Police must remove before releasing is set by statute. Section 9121(b)(2) requires the State Police, before disseminating to an individual or a noncriminal justice agency, to extract "All notations of arrests, indictments or other information relating to the initiation of criminal proceedings where three years have elapsed from the date of arrest, no conviction has occurred, and no proceedings are pending seeking a conviction." So an old non-conviction is not merely disfavored in a repository response: it is removed from the copy that goes out.

Whether that extraction reaches an employer-initiated request as cleanly as it reaches an individual one is a question the statute does not answer on its face. The dissemination duty is owed to "any individual or noncriminal justice agency", and an employer is a noncriminal justice agency, so the text appears to reach it. No State Police statement applying the rule to employer-initiated checks was located, and the page does not assert one. It is on the pending list rather than in the table, because the difference between the two readings is the difference between a rule that governs screening products and one that governs only individual requests.

The two access routes are not interchangeable, and the forms say so. The SP 4-170 is the access-and-review form, it is stamped "NOT FOR EMPLOYMENT PURPOSES", and it is the route by which a person reviews their own record. The $22 individual request and the $27 notarized request are the request channels, and volunteer checks are free. A screening product that reaches the repository does so as a noncriminal justice agency request, which is a different footing from an individual asking about their own file.

Chapter 91 does not reach court records, which removes the state's accuracy duties from the place a search actually runs. Section 9104(a)(2) excludes "Any documents, records or indices prepared or maintained by or filed in any court of this Commonwealth, including but not limited to the minor judiciary." A Common Pleas docket is therefore outside the chapter, and nothing in Chapter 91 imposes a completeness or accuracy duty on it. The authoritative record for a Pennsylvania conviction is still the docket in the county that produced it, and the state repository is a derived copy of what agencies chose to submit.

The remedy provision is real and worth knowing before a letter is written. Section 9183(b) gives a person aggrieved by a violation of the chapter a substantive right of action, "actual and real damages of not less than $100 for each violation", reasonable costs and attorney's fees, and exemplary and punitive damages "of not less than $1,000 nor more than $10,000" for a violation found to be willful. Section 9125 states no penalty of its own, and § 9183(b) is where the consequence sits.

The routing consequence is the same as it is in a county-by-county state, with one extra layer. A Pennsylvania product is honest when it says which of the two sources it used and, on the court side, which counties it ran. A repository response is a State Police record whose coverage depends on what each agency submitted and which by statute excludes federal and out-of-state material. A county search is authoritative for its county and silent about the rest. Philadelphia then adds a third regime on top of both, because Chapter 9-3500 restricts what the employer may consider regardless of where the information came from.

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

What Pennsylvania law adds

Cities that go further than the state

• Philadelphia. A true ban-the-box ordinance covering private employers, and the stricter regime in the state by a wide margin. Philadelphia Code Chapter 9-3500 makes it unlawful for a City agency or private employer to make any inquiry about criminal convictions during the employment process, and the ban reaches a question about the applicant's willingness to submit to a background check. The reach is deliberate: § 9-3502(6) defines an inquiry to include indirect conduct gathering information by any mode of communication, "whether conducted by an employer or for an employer by a third party", and § 9-3502(9) defines a private employer to include job placement and referral agencies and any third party that facilitates the relationship of work for pay between two other parties, so the ordinance reaches the screening vendor acting for a covered employer and covers independent contractors, rideshare drivers and gig workers. The current limits are a felony conviction within seven years and a misdemeanor within four, each measured from the underlying arrest or the release from incarceration for the conviction, whichever is later; summary offense convictions may not be considered at all; and no employer may maintain a blanket policy of excluding anyone with a conviction. A provisional decision must give the applicant ten business days to supply evidence of inaccuracy or an explanation before a final determination is made, and § 9-3505(3) preserves 18 Pa.C.S. § 9125 expressly, so the city and state regimes stack rather than displace each other. Philadelphia Code Chapter 9-3500 · Philadelphia Code § 9-3504(4) · Philadelphia Code § 9-3504.1(3) · Philadelphia Code § 9-3505(3) · Bill No. 250373-A, approved 8 October 2025, effective 6 January 2026
• Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh reaches City employment and City contractors and nothing else, so there is no general private-employer reach and no private-employer size threshold to state. City employment is covered by Pittsburgh City Code Ch. 181 (Personnel) § 181.12, added by Ordinance 2012-0013. City contractors are covered by Ch. 161 § 161.16A, added by Ordinance 2023-1732, which deleted the former § 161.16(h) that Ordinance 2012-1015 had added; the Mayor's Office of Equal Protection publishes guidance confirming § 161.16A as the operative citation. An employer bidding on or holding City work is covered. An employer with no City contract is not, and a policy written for Philadelphia does not travel to Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh City Code § 181.12 · Pittsburgh City Code § 161.16A · Ordinance 2023-1732

Reporting limits at a glance

Every figure below is against Pennsylvania 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.

Pennsylvania adds a written notice duty that is its own requirement rather than a restatement of the federal one. Section 9125(c) provides that "The employer shall notify in writing the applicant if the decision not to hire the applicant is based in whole or in part on criminal history record information." The trigger is the decision and the basis of it, not the existence of a report, and the duty sits on the employer.

The 2026 Third Circuit decision closes the argument that the duty is avoided when the applicant volunteers the conviction. In Phath v. Central Transport LLC the court held that "What matters in § 9125(a) is the type of information that the employer received, not its source", and that an applicant's own disclosure is not one of the sources excluded by § 9104. An employer that learns of a conviction at interview, rather than from a report, is inside the section, and a letter that treats the disclosure as outside it has the statute the wrong way round.

The content of the record matters as much as the decision. Section 9122.5(b) provides that an expunged record or one subject to limited access under § 9122.1 or § 9122.2 may not be considered a conviction that would prohibit employment under any law of the Commonwealth, and § 9122.5(a)(1) lets a person asked about such a record "respond as if the offense did not occur". A report that carries a sealed Pennsylvania record is carrying something the employer may not use, and the letter should be able to say whether the record it relied on was sealed.

The remedy is priced in the chapter. Section 9183(b)(2) entitles a person found to have been aggrieved to "actual and real damages of not less than $100 for each violation" plus reasonable costs and attorney's fees, and provides that exemplary and punitive damages "of not less than $1,000 nor more than $10,000 shall be imposed for any violation ... found to be willful". Section 9125 states no penalty of its own, so a policy written against § 9125 alone is missing the consequence.

Philadelphia adds a sequence of its own, and it starts before the decision is made. Under Chapter 9-3500 the notice must state that the employer intends to reject rather than that it has rejected, must be accurate and specific enough for a reasonable person to determine whether they would be an unacceptable risk, must include the basis and the documents relied on, and must give clear instructions for responding directly to the employer. The applicant then has ten business days to supply evidence of inaccuracy or an explanation before a final determination. If a complaint is filed with the Commission on Human Relations, § 9-3506(4) requires the employer to file a statement setting out the specific record relied on, the duties of the job considered, the time passed since arrest or incarceration, and the evidence of rehabilitation it considered.

Screening in Pennsylvania: what your process needs

• Establish which source the answer came from before anything else. A PATCH response is a State Police record built from what Pennsylvania law enforcement agencies submitted, and a Common Pleas docket search is a clerk-level record for one county. They are not interchangeable and they do not answer the same question.
• Say which counties you searched. Pennsylvania has 67 counties and no single index that covers all of them, so a coverage statement is a list of counties rather than the name of the state.
• Do not read the digits after CP in a docket number as a judicial district. CP-51-CR-####-YYYY embeds a county code, and 51 is Philadelphia. The county code and the district number are separate systems and both look plausible.
• Do not treat a PATCH response as a national or federal check. The State Police state that all online and mail-in requests are checked against Pennsylvania law enforcement records only, not federal records.
• Apply § 9125 to the decision, not only to the report. A felony or misdemeanor conviction may be considered only to the extent it relates to the applicant's suitability for the position applied for, and that judgment has to be made and recorded.
• Send the § 9125(c) written notice when a decision not to hire is based in whole or in part on criminal history record information. It is a state duty that sits alongside the federal adverse-action sequence, and it binds the employer.
• Do not rely on the applicant having disclosed the conviction himself to escape § 9125. The Third Circuit held in January 2026 that the source of the information does not matter, and that an applicant's own disclosure is not a source excluded by § 9104.
• Check whether the record is sealed before relying on it. Under § 9122.5(a.1) an expunged or limited-access record may not be used for employment purposes except where federal law requires it, and under § 9122.5(b) it may not be treated as a disqualifying conviction under any law of the Commonwealth.
• Check the sealing trigger as well as the seal. Section 9122.2 makes limited access automatic for second and third degree misdemeanors and comparable offenses after seven years, for a qualifying offense after ten years, for non-conviction dispositions, for summary offenses after five years, and for a conditional pardon.
• Do not cite 4 Pa. Code ch. 602a. The State Civil Service Commission rules that let the Commission refuse to examine, certify or refer an applicant convicted of a crime were deleted effective 10 June 2023 at 53 Pa.B. 3082, and the chapter now reads "{Reserved}". The governing law is 71 Pa.C.S. Part III.
• Do not cite a Pennsylvania consumer reporting statute. No citable Pennsylvania consumer-reporting section was located, and the phrase "Credit Reporting Agency Act" returns nothing from the Commonwealth's own quoted-phrase search. The federal Fair Credit Reporting Act is the operative statute for a Pennsylvania employment report.
• Ask whether the employer operates in Philadelphia before writing the process. The ordinance bans the inquiry rather than the use, reaches third-party research conducted for an employer, covers gig workers and independent contractors, and sets a seven-year felony and four-year misdemeanor window that the state does not have.
• Do not describe the Philadelphia ten business days as a rescission period and do not tell an employer to hold the position open. The Code right is to submit evidence of inaccuracy or an explanation before a final determination, and nothing in the chapter requires the position to be kept open. The figure is ten business days, not ten days, and it predates the 2026 amendments.
• Treat the Philadelphia and Pennsylvania regimes as stacking rather than as alternatives. Section 9-3505(3) preserves 18 Pa.C.S. § 9125 expressly, so a Philadelphia employer has to satisfy both the city inquiry ban and the state job-relatedness and notice duties.
• Run the federal sequence in full. Pennsylvania adds the § 9125(c) written notice and Philadelphia adds its own provisional-decision sequence, and neither replaces the federal pre-adverse action notice, the dispute window or the adverse action notice.
• Ask before you assume on salary history, salary threshold and credit checks. No Pennsylvania rule was located in any of the three, and none of the three was verified as absent.

Related states

• 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.
• Virginia. Virginia repealed its private-sector ban-the-box in 1985 and never replaced it, and it regulates the screening provider instead: a business screening service must register with the State Police to receive sealing notifications, must delete a sealed record regardless of the source it came from, must carry the record’s collection date on every dissemination, and is liable for $1,000 or actual damages. Its sealing sections moved to a new chapter on 1 July 2026 and its cannabis employer-disclosure ban was repealed the same day.
• 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.

What we do

Pennsylvania is the state that regulates use and leaves the question alone. 18 Pa.C.S. § 9125 lets an employer consider a felony or misdemeanor conviction only to the extent it relates to the applicant's suitability for the position applied for, and requires a written notice when a decision not to hire rests in whole or in part on criminal history record information. The Third Circuit confirmed in January 2026 that the duty does not lift when the applicant discloses the conviction himself. Philadelphia then bans the question outright and sets a seven-year felony window and a four-year misdemeanor window measured from the underlying arrest or release from incarceration, whichever is later. Underneath both, the State Police repository answers against Pennsylvania law enforcement records only and never federal ones, court dockets sit outside the state criminal history statute, and the docket number that identifies a case carries a county code where a district number would be expected. Our Pennsylvania work distinguishes a repository response from a county docket search, states which counties were run, checks whether a record is sealed before relying on it, and writes the § 9125(c) notice. If your current vendor calls a PATCH result a national check, or treats Philadelphia as an ordinary Pennsylvania county, this is where that costs you.

Sources

• 18 Pa.C.S. § 9125, Consideration of convictions, read through an Internet Archive capture of the official text
• 18 Pa.C.S. § 9121, General regulations, including the three-year extraction rule at (b)(2)
• 18 Pa.C.S. § 9104, Scope, excluding court records from Chapter 91 at (a)(2)
• 18 Pa.C.S. § 9122.1, Petition for limited access, and § 9122.2, Clean slate limited access
• 18 Pa.C.S. § 9122.5, Effects of expunged records and records subject to limited access
• 18 Pa.C.S. § 9122.6, Employer immunity from liability
• 18 Pa.C.S. § 9124, Use of records by licensing agencies
• 18 Pa.C.S. § 9183, Civil actions, the damages provision at (b)
• Rodney Phath v. Central Transport LLC, No. 25-1028 (3d Cir. Jan. 28, 2026), opinion PDF from the court's own site
• Philadelphia Fair Criminal Record Screening Practices, Bill No. 250373-A, certified enacted copy, approved 8 October 2025
• Fair Chance Hiring poster, July 2026 revision, City of Philadelphia, citing Philadelphia Code § 9-3509
• Fair Criminal Records Screening Standards Ordinance amendments 2026, City of Philadelphia summary
• Pre-employment marijuana testing complaints, City of Philadelphia, describing Philadelphia Code Chapters 9-5500 and 9-5502
• MD 515.15 Amended, Hiring-Related Verifications and Background Checks, Pennsylvania Office of Administration, 21 July 2023
• Manual 210.03 Amended, Index of Issuances, Office of Administration, current through 30 June 2026, the basis for the fair-chance negative
• 6 Pa. Code § 15.145, Applicant or employee rights of review, the only regulation located that cross-references 18 Pa.C.S. § 9125
• Route note: legis.state.pa.us, leg.state.pa.us, www.palegis.us, pasen.gov and pahouse.com all failed on port 443 from this environment, sandboxed and unsandboxed, so the Chapter 91 text was read through Internet Archive captures. The Philadelphia Code returns HTTP 403 at codelibrary.amlegal.com on every path including /robots.txt, so the ordinance was read as full rendered text through Wayback raw replay of captures self-labeled "2026 Code (current)" plus the certified enacted bill. www.pacourts.us, www.attorneygeneral.gov and www.ncsl.org return 403; opinions were read from the Third Circuit's own opinion store. The Pennsylvania Code is reachable by direct URL and its search UI is a Keyoti WCF endpoint that only matches quoted phrases correctly, which is why the credit-check and AI negatives are built from quoted queries and are labeled as such.

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.