SC · state guide

South Carolina background screening law

How the courts here are organized

South Carolina organizes its trial courts by judicial circuit rather than by county, and the circuit is the unit a criminal search has to be scoped to. S.C. Code § 14-5-610(A) opens: "The State is divided into sixteen judicial circuits as follows:" and then names the counties composing each. Each circuit has its own solicitor, and under § 17-22-920 the clerk of court "shall direct all inquiries concerning the expungement process to the corresponding solicitor's office", so the circuit is also the administrative unit for record relief rather than the county.

The Circuit Court is the state's court of general jurisdiction and it is expressly a court of record. Section 14-5-10 provides that "The circuit courts herein established shall be courts of record, and the books of record thereof shall, at all times, be subject to the inspection of any person interested therein." The Judicial Branch describes the same court in its own words: "The Circuit Court is the State's court of general jurisdiction. It has a civil court, the Court of Common Pleas, and a criminal court, the Court of General Sessions. In addition to its general trial jurisdiction, the Circuit Court has limited appellate jurisdiction over appeals from the Probate Court, Magistrate Court, and Municipal Court." The same page gives the bench: "There are forty-nine circuit judges who serve the sixteen circuits on a rotating basis, with court terms and assignments determined by the Chief Justice based upon recommendations of Court Administration."

Below the Circuit Court sit two tiers that the Code calls the summary courts. Section 16-3-1510(6), in the definitions for the victims' rights article, defines a summary court as a "magistrate or municipal court", and the same term is used of them in § 22-5-115 and throughout § 17-22-950. The Judicial Branch describes the magistrate tier as follows: "There are approximately 300 magistrates in South Carolina, each serving the county for which he or she is appointed. They are appointed to four-year terms by the Governor upon the advice and consent of the Senate." It adds: "Magistrates generally have criminal trial jurisdiction over all offenses subject to the penalty of a fine, as set by statute, but generally, not exceeding $500.00 or imprisonment not exceeding 30 days, or both. In addition, they are responsible for setting bail, conducting preliminary hearings, and issuing arrest and search warrants." The magistrate bench is therefore appointed county by county even though the trial court is organized by circuit.

Municipal courts are created by local choice and their criminal jurisdiction mirrors the magistrate tier. Section 14-25-5(a) provides that "The council of each municipality in this State may, by ordinance, establish a municipal court, which shall be a part of the unified judicial system of this State, for the trial and determination of all cases within its jurisdiction." Section 14-25-45 provides that each municipal court "shall have jurisdiction to try all cases arising under the ordinances of the municipality for which established", that it "shall also have all such powers, duties and jurisdiction in criminal cases made under state law and conferred upon magistrates", and that it "shall have no jurisdiction in civil matters". The Judicial Branch adds the count: "Approximately 200 municipalities in South Carolina have chosen to create municipal courts." Because a municipality may also choose to prosecute elsewhere, § 14-25-5(c) permits it to "prosecute any of its cases in any magistrate court in the county in which such municipality is situate upon approval by the governing body of the county".

The Family Court is a separate statewide system and it takes the juvenile criminal business. The Judicial Branch states that "The uniform statewide Family Court system was established by statute in 1976", that it "has exclusive jurisdiction over all matters involving domestic or family relationships", and that it "also generally has exclusive jurisdiction over minors less than the age of eighteen alleged to have violated any state law or municipal ordinance. However, most traffic, fish, and game law violations are still triable in the magistrate or municipal courts. Serious criminal charges may be transferred to the Circuit Court." At least two family court judges sit in each of the sixteen circuits. A juvenile matter and a domestic matter therefore sit outside the Circuit Court file, and a search scoped to the Circuit Court alone will not see them.

The record question is the one that decides what a South Carolina court search can actually return. Section 22-3-790 requires that "In the trial of any case before a magistrate the testimony of all witnesses must be taken down in writing and signed by the witnesses except when the defendant waives the taking and signing of the testimony." On appeal the magistrate files "the record, a statement of all the proceedings in the case, and the testimony taken at the trial" under § 18-3-40, and § 18-3-70 provides that the appeal "must be heard by the Court of Common Pleas upon the grounds of exceptions made and upon the papers required under this chapter, without the examination of witnesses in that court." For municipal courts § 14-25-105 is explicit: "There shall be no trial de novo on any appeal from a municipal court." A record therefore exists at the summary court level, but it is a paper file that travels only on appeal, and it is not the file the state's central court administration keeps.

The repository route is the one that separates South Carolina from a state where a screening firm has to work through the courts. Section 23-3-110 establishes "as a department within the State Law Enforcement Division a statewide criminal information and communication system", and § 23-3-115(A) governs what may be done with it. That subsection prohibits the sale or dissemination of the database itself and then preserves the individual transaction: "The sale or dissemination of the criminal history record database maintained by the State Law Enforcement Division is prohibited. The individual sale of individual criminal history records by the State Law Enforcement Division is not affected." It then removes the usual accuracy gateway: "Notwithstanding any other provision of law, criminal history record information, including arrest history, may be disseminated in accordance with regulations regardless of whether a corresponding judicial finding or disposition is part of the record." The regulation that implements the access route is S.C. Code Regs. 73-23(E), which names "private persons, governmental entities, businesses, commercial establishments, professional organizations, charitable organizations and others" as permissible recipients, and § 73-23(E)(3) provides that "All requests for criminal history record information by non-criminal justice users shall be made in writing or by personal appearance at the Criminal Records Department, or by the Internet."

What the report contains is set by regulation and it is wider than a conviction record. S.C. Code Regs. 73-23(E) provides that dissemination "will include all unsealed conviction data, non-conviction data and non-disposition data as well as findings of not guilty, nolle prosequi, dismissals, and similar dispositions which show any final disposition of an arrest." Read with § 23-3-115(A)'s "regardless of whether a corresponding judicial finding or disposition is part of the record", a South Carolina state record can lawfully carry an arrest for which nothing further is recorded. The identification basis is also stated and it is not fingerprint-based for a name search: § 73-23(E)(1) provides that "Identification of an individual whose record is to be searched will be based upon name, race, sex, date of birth, and, if available, a social security number", and that "Notation will be made on any disseminated records which are identified solely by these characteristics and not by fingerprint comparison." The notation is the field to check before a name-matched result is treated as an identification.

The fee structure is set by statute and it is unusual in two places. Section 23-3-115(A) requires SLED to "charge and collect a fee of twenty-five dollars for each criminal record search", with revenue above a stated threshold retained by the division for agency operations. Subsection (B) fixes the fee at eight dollars where the search is conducted "for a charitable organization, a bona fide mentor, or for the use of a charitable organization", and adds that an authorized organization "shall not charge the volunteer, mentor, member, or employee more than eight dollars or any additional fee that is not required by the State Law Enforcement Division", and that the results "must not be resold". Subsection (C) waives the fee entirely for a search on a substitute teacher conducted on behalf of a school district.

The counter-rule sits in the same subarticle and it is about the applicant rather than the market. S.C. Code Regs. 73-24(A)(1) entitles an individual, on verification of identity, to "review, without undue burden to either the agency or the individual, specific portions of criminal history record information maintained about the individual and obtain a copy thereof when necessary for the purpose of challenge or correction", and then provides that "Individuals wishing to review their records must appear personally at the SLED Criminal Records Department." Paragraph (A)(6) states that where the individual is accompanied by another person, "including a potential employer, the accompanying person must not be allowed to see the record", and directs that person to the regular dissemination procedures. Paragraph (A)(7) states: "Waivers have no authority. The record does not belong to the reviewing person, but to the agency which holds it." Paragraph (B)(1) requires the individual to "submit his or her name, date of birth, and a complete set of fingerprints recorded on an approved non-criminal fingerprint card", and (B)(2) limits inspection to once every six months while the record is unchallenged.

On the court side the routing problem is structural. The Public Index is not one statewide index but one index per county, published at a per-county path on publicindex.sccourts.org, and the courts' own case records page lists 46 of them, matching the state's 46 counties. The same page states that "Some Municipal Court records are available in the Public Index Search" and links exactly two: the Municipal Court of the City of Charleston through the Charleston index, and the Municipal Court of the City of Mauldin through the Greenville index. Against roughly 200 municipal courts that have been created, that is the coverage, and the page also requires "a web browser that supports Cookies and JavaScript" for searching. The gap is compounded by what the state does not keep: the Judicial Branch states that expungement orders should not be forwarded to SC Court Administration for magistrate or municipal court dispositions "because SCCA does not retain information which identifies defendants by name or SSN for these charges". A name-based central court search therefore cannot reach the tier that decides most minor offenses in the state.

Cases can also move between tiers after charging, which affects where the dispositive record ends up. Section 22-3-545(A) allows a criminal case, "the penalty for which the crime in the case does not exceed five thousand five hundred dollars or one year imprisonment, or both, either as originally charged or as charged pursuant to the terms of a plea agreement", to be transferred from General Sessions. Under (B)(2), "A case transferred to a magistrates or municipal court not disposed of in one hundred eighty days from the date of transfer automatically reverts to the docket of the general sessions court." Subsection (D) then places the record burden on the prosecution rather than the court: "Provision for an adequate record must be made by the solicitor's office." A matter originally charged in General Sessions can therefore be disposed of in a summary court, and the section that enables that transfer is the section that has to supply the record for it.

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

What South Carolina law adds

Reporting limits at a glance

Every figure below is against South Carolina 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.

South Carolina adds a use bar at § 17-22-960 that reads against the employer rather than against the agency: "Except for criminal justice agencies, employers shall not use expunged information adversely against an employee." The same section provides that an employer of a worker who has had an expungement "shall not, at any time, be subject to any administrative or legal claim or cause of action related to the worker's expunged offense", and that no information related to an expungement "shall be used or introduced as evidence in any administrative or legal proceeding involving negligent hiring, negligent retention, or similar claims". A report that carries an expunged South Carolina disposition is a report this section speaks to, and the first sentence of it is a prohibition that belongs in the client's file before any letter is written.

The destruction rule gives a letter a date to check. Section 17-1-40(B)(1) requires the arrest and booking record, associated bench warrants, mug shots and fingerprints to be destroyed where a charge was discharged, dismissed or resulted in a finding of not guilty, with law enforcement and prosecution agencies permitted to hold the material "under seal for three years and one hundred twenty days" and detention facilities to hold theirs "for a period not to exceed three years and one hundred twenty days from the date of the expungement order". Material that is under seal is "not subject to disclosure other than to a law enforcement or prosecution agency, and attorneys representing a law enforcement or prosecution agency, unless disclosure is allowed by court order". Where a report carries a South Carolina non-conviction inside that window, the seal provision rather than the destruction provision is the one that governs, and an intentional violation by an agency employee is contempt of court under (B)(2).

The state also modifies the dispute mechanics when the report is a credit report. Section 37-20-170(B) requires a consumer reporting agency to "deny or admit the inaccuracy to the consumer in writing" within thirty days of a written notice of inaccuracy, and where it denies, to supply "the basis for the denial", a copy of the consumer's file as revised, the business name and address of any furnisher contacted, a description of the procedures used, and "sufficient evidence that the information is true and accurate information as it relates to that consumer". Section 37-20-170(C) requires the agency, on the consumer's request, to inform anyone who received a report containing the inaccurate information within the last six months. Where a South Carolina process runs a credit component, the state response obligation runs alongside the federal one and is not satisfied by the federal notice alone.

The damages exposure is set per incident rather than per action. Section 37-20-170(D) makes a knowing and willful violation of chapter 37-20 liable for "three times the amount of actual damages or three thousand dollars for each incident, whichever is greater, as well as reasonable attorney's fees and costs", and (E) makes a negligent violation liable for "the greater of actual damages or one thousand dollars for each incident", with fees and costs. Subsection (F) escalates where the injury is to the consumer's "employment options": if the failure to take inaccurate information off a credit report is not corrected within ten days after the entry of a judgment for damages, "the assessed damages must be increased to one thousand dollars each day until the inaccurate information is removed". A South Carolina credit-report dispute that has already produced a judgment is therefore a matter where delay has a stated daily price.

South Carolina has no state adverse-action notice duty for a criminal-history report, no state pre-request notice and no state lookback rule. The federal sequence is the whole of the procedural requirement for a conviction report. The state overlay is the § 17-22-960 use bar, the § 17-1-40 seal and destruction rule, and the chapter 37-20 dispute, damages and security freeze provisions where a credit component runs.

Screening in South Carolina: what your process needs

• Do not treat South Carolina as a state where the repository is closed. S.C. Code Regs. 73-23(E) permits dissemination to "businesses, commercial establishments, professional organizations, charitable organizations and others", and § 23-3-115(A) allows criminal history record information "including arrest history" to be disseminated "regardless of whether a corresponding judicial finding or disposition is part of the record".
• Read a South Carolina state record for non-disposition and non-conviction data before reporting it. The regulation says dissemination "will include all unsealed conviction data, non-conviction data and non-disposition data", so an arrest entry with nothing after it is inside the standard product rather than an error in it.
• Check the § 73-23(E)(1) notation on any name-based result. Identification is by "name, race, sex, date of birth, and, if available, a social security number", and the regulation requires a notation on records "identified solely by these characteristics and not by fingerprint comparison".
• Do not build a process on the applicant pulling their own record. S.C. Code Regs. 73-24(A)(1) limits the individual review to challenge and correction, (A)(6) bars a potential employer accompanying the individual from seeing the record, and (A)(7) provides that "Waivers have no authority."
• Expunge or wait, because there is no lookback. No reporting window was located in any instrument read, and the Code full-text search returns no matches for "lookback period". A South Carolina conviction that is not expunged remains reportable.
• Do not describe South Carolina expungement as automatic. Section 22-5-910(A) requires an application to the circuit court after three years for a conviction carrying not more than thirty days or a one thousand dollar fine, or both, plus a first offense for unlawful possession of a firearm or weapon, and (B) sets five years for domestic violence in the third degree.
• Do use the section 17-22-950 route where it fits, and check the fingerprint condition. It is automatic only where the charges were brought in a summary court, the person was found not guilty or the charges were dismissed or nolle prossed, and the person was fingerprinted for the charges. Otherwise it is an application, and either way (E) requires Internet-based public records to be cleared within thirty days of the disposition date.
• Budget the $250. Section 17-22-940(A) makes the fee payable to the solicitor's office per individual order and nonrefundable "regardless of whether the offense is later determined to be statutorily ineligible for expungement or the solicitor or his designee does not consent to the expungement".
• Put § 17-22-960 in the client file before an adverse decision. It bars employers, other than criminal justice agencies, from using expunged information adversely against an employee, and it bars expungement information from being used in a negligent hiring or negligent retention proceeding. Section 22-5-910(D) and § 22-5-930(E) then require SLED to keep a nonpublic record of the expungement, exempt from release under § 34-11-95 and the Freedom of Information Act, which is the reason a later search on the same person does not surface the offense.
• Scope a court search to the summary courts as well as the Circuit Court, or say that you have not. Magistrates and municipal judges handle every offense punishable by a fine of five hundred dollars or less, thirty days or less, or both, and roughly 200 municipalities have created municipal courts.
• Do not expect a central court file to return a summary court disposition by name. The Judicial Branch states that orders should not be forwarded to SC Court Administration for magistrate or municipal court dispositions "because SCCA does not retain information which identifies defendants by name or SSN for these charges".
• Use the county index, not a statewide one. The Public Index is published as one index per county across the state's 46 counties, and only two municipal courts are reachable through it. Searching requires a browser supporting cookies and JavaScript.
• Check the transfer route where a charge was reduced. Section 22-3-545(A) allows a case carrying not more than five thousand five hundred dollars or one year, or both, to be transferred from General Sessions, and (B)(2) reverts it to the General Sessions docket if it is not disposed of within one hundred eighty days.
• Do not rely on a South Carolina cannabis defense. There is no medical program and no adult-use program, the § 44-53-110(b)(vi) CBD exception is a definitional carve-out for named epilepsy diagnoses, and the Julian's Law immunity at § 44-53-1840(A) runs to persons inside the clinical trial article and not to an employer. A positive test is governed by the employer's policy and any federal obligation.
• Ask the private investigation licensing question before assuming the § 40-18-140(2) exemption covers the work. It covers a consumer reporting agency "when gathering, processing, or reporting information directly related to a credit rating or credit status", and § 40-18-20(A) defines the licensed activity to include obtaining information about a person's honesty, integrity, credibility, trustworthiness, reputation or character.
• Do not assume a salary-history or salary-threshold rule exists here. Neither was located in the instruments read and neither was verified as absent from the whole Code, and no South Carolina statute or regulation was found that switches a protection off above an earnings figure.

Related states

• North Carolina. North Carolina has no general ban-the-box, and its own statute says the point out loud: § 15A-153(a) provides that nothing in the section "shall be construed to prohibit an employer from asking a job applicant about criminal charges or convictions that have not been expunged and are part of the public record." The employer-facing rule is § 15A-153(c), which bars requiring an applicant to disclose an expunged arrest, charge or conviction and bars knowingly inquiring about one, with no employer-size threshold, enforced by the Commissioner of Labor with a written warning for a first violation and up to five hundred dollars for each later one, and with no private cause of action. The rule that catches a screening provider is separate and sits in the liability section: § 15A-152(a) requires a private entity that holds itself out as compiling and disseminating criminal history record information for compensation to destroy, and not to disseminate, information it has received a notice to delete, within ten business days where no license sets a time. That subsection carries no federal carve-out, and the Fair Credit Reporting Act and Gramm-Leach-Bliley carve-outs in subsections (b) and (c) do not reach it, so a consumer reporting agency is outside the dissemination limit and inside the duty to destroy.
• Georgia. Georgia’s First Offender Act says a discharge is not a conviction and "shall not be used to disqualify an individual in any application for employment or appointment to office in either the public or private sector", and the section opens by excepting Code Section 42-8-63.1: a discharge can still disqualify applicants to schools, child welfare agencies, child and after-school care, long-term care, day care for elderly persons and facilities for people who are mentally ill or developmentally disabled, on one offense list for discharges before 1 July 2016 and a different one after, and any discharge involving a felony or a crime involving moral turpitude can bar a peace officer certification. The superior court is the felony tier in circuits carrying all 159 counties, and a magistrate court sits in every one of them.
• 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.

What we do

South Carolina is one of the states where the repository is the easy route and the courts are the hard one, and the two need to be described separately. SLED will disseminate criminal history record information to businesses and commercial establishments under S.C. Code Regs. 73-23(E), and § 23-3-115(A) allows arrest history to go out "regardless of whether a corresponding judicial finding or disposition is part of the record", so a South Carolina state record can carry an arrest with nothing after it. The individual's own review is not an alternative: § 73-24(A)(6) bars a potential employer accompanying the applicant from seeing the record, and (A)(7) says waivers have no authority. On the court side the state is sixteen judicial circuits, forty-nine circuit judges, roughly 300 magistrates and roughly 200 municipal courts, and Court Administration does not retain name or SSN information for magistrate or municipal dispositions, so the central court file cannot answer a name search for the tier that decides most minor offenses. Where the record has been expunged, § 17-22-960 bars an employer from using it adversely against an employee, and § 22-5-910 makes the expungement of a conviction an application to the circuit court with a three-year wait and a $250 fee. Our South Carolina work reports whether an answer came from SLED or from a county index, carries the § 73-23(E)(1) name-match notation forward rather than dropping it, and checks a § 17-22-960 use bar against any expunged disposition before a letter goes out. If your current vendor treats a South Carolina state check as a conviction-only product, or assumes the summary courts are in the central file, this is where that shows.

Sources

• S.C. Code §§ 23-3-90, 23-3-110 and 23-3-115, fingerprint-based checks, the statewide criminal information and communication system, and the fee and dissemination provisions at § 23-3-115(A), read live
• S.C. Code Ann. Regs. ch. 73, Subarticle 1 of Article 3, including Regs. 73-22, 73-23 on dissemination at (E) and 73-24 on individual access and review at (A), read as a PDF and converted with pdftotext
• S.C. Code §§ 22-5-910 to 22-5-930, expungement of convictions, youthful offender convictions and first offense drug convictions, read live
• S.C. Code §§ 17-22-910 to 17-22-960, applications for expungement, fees, summary court orders and the employer use bar at § 17-22-960, read live
• S.C. Code § 17-1-40, destruction and sealing of non-conviction records and the three year and one hundred twenty day retention, read live
• S.C. Code §§ 14-5-10 and 14-5-610, the Circuit Court as a court of record and the sixteen judicial circuits, read live
• S.C. Code § 14-23-1120, the probate court as a court of record, read live
• S.C. Code §§ 14-25-5, 14-25-45 and 14-25-105, establishment, jurisdiction and appeals of municipal courts, read live
• S.C. Code §§ 22-3-545, 22-3-550 and 22-3-790, transfers from General Sessions, magistrate criminal jurisdiction and the recording of testimony, read live
• S.C. Code §§ 18-3-10 to 18-3-70, appeals from magistrates in criminal cases, read live
• S.C. Code §§ 37-20-110, 37-20-160 and 37-20-170, definitions, security freezes and the dispute and damages provisions, read live
• S.C. Code §§ 44-53-110, 44-53-1830 and 44-53-1840, the CBD exception in the marijuana definition and the Julian's Law clinical trial article, read live
• S.C. Code §§ 40-18-20, 40-18-70 and 40-18-140, private investigation licensing and the consumer reporting agency exemption, read live
• South Carolina Judicial Branch, Case Records Search, the per-county Public Index list and the municipal court note, read live
• South Carolina Judicial Branch, Expungement Application Process, including the statement on orders not forwarded to SC Court Administration, read live
• South Carolina Judicial Branch, Circuit Court, Magistrate Court, Municipal Court and Family Court pages, read live
• Route note: www.scstatehouse.gov is reachable only to Node's TLS stack from this environment. curl fails reproducibly with "schannel: next InitializeSecurityContext failed: SEC_E_UNSUPPORTED_FUNCTION (0x80090302)" and PowerShell's Invoke-WebRequest fails with "Could not create SSL/TLS secure channel", so every statute and regulation capture was taken with a Node fetch script and saved to disk. www.sccourts.org negotiates on the Accept header and returns HTTP 406 with a zero-byte body to a request sending Accept: */*, answering 200 to a full browser Accept header with Sec-Fetch headers; the case records page was recovered that way after an earlier empty capture had been misfiled. publicindex.sccourts.org returns 406 under every header set tried and the trial court records page returns 406 as well. sled.sc.gov returns 403 to a browser user agent. governor.sc.gov is behind an Amazon CloudFront distribution that answers with a country-level block. The Internet Archive is unreachable from this environment entirely (curl exit 7, and node ECONNREFUSED to 207.241.237.3:443), so no source on this page was recovered through replay and none depends on it.

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.