TX · state guide
Texas background screening law
What is different here
- Texas sets its own seven-year rule and starts the clock at disposition, release or parole rather than at arrest. The same record ages out on a different date than the federal rule would give it, and arrest and indictment sit inside that window rather than being barred.
- The salary threshold is Texas’s own figure, and it is $75,000, the same as the federal one. So there is no state threshold here that reaches further than the federal exemption, which is what makes New York and Washington different.
- There is no statewide criminal history repository a screener can buy into directly. Department of Public Safety records are confidential by statute, and access runs through a subscription clearinghouse instead.
- Austin enacted a private-employer fair-chance ordinance in 2016, and the state preempted it in 2023 by naming hiring practices as a field a city may not regulate. Dallas and San Antonio show no such ordinance in their own records.
- The courts are the other half of the problem. Texas has 254 counties, and the district courts that hold felony jurisdiction do not map to county lines, which the state’s own court administration publishes about.
How the courts here are organized
Texas has 254 counties, and the court that matters most for screening is the one that does not respect them. District courts hold felony jurisdiction, and a district court’s territory is not the county: some cover a single county, some cover several, and the state’s own Office of Court Administration publishes material on what it calls the complexities in geographical jurisdiction of district courts. When the body that runs the courts writes about the problem, it is not a vendor’s excuse.
Below the district courts sit county courts and justice of the peace courts, which carry the misdemeanor volume on county lines. So the felony layer does not match the county and the misdemeanor layer does, which means a coverage statement that says “all 254 counties” is describing the lower layer accurately and the upper layer by implication only.
The contrast is worth stating precisely. In California, the superior court is one per county, so the county is exactly the right unit and a county list is a complete description. In Michigan, the felony courts group counties while the misdemeanor courts sit on city and township lines, so neither layer matches the county. Texas sits between them: one layer matches, one does not, and a search specification has to say which it is describing.
| Counties | 254 |
|---|---|
| Felony trial courts | District courts, jurisdiction does not map to county lines |
| Misdemeanor courts | County courts and justice of the peace courts, on county lines |
| Unit of search | The district for felonies, the county for misdemeanors, and the two do not coincide |
| Statewide case search | re:SearchTX, self-described as unofficial and dependent on eFiling participation |
| State criminal history | DPS records confidential by statute, reached through a subscription clearinghouse |
Texas does not sell its criminal history. Under Government Code §411.083(a) the Department of Public Safety’s criminal history record information is confidential, and access runs through a subscription clearinghouse under §411.0845 rather than through the state directly. That single fact changes what a Texas search is. There is no state-level product a screener can buy the way it can in a state with an open repository, so a Texas search is assembled from court-level sources and from records the state releases only through an intermediary.
Two obligations sit on the parties that hold that data. Section 411.0851 requires a private entity that compiles or disseminates criminal history to destroy the record and stop disseminating it once it receives notice of an expunction or an order of nondisclosure, and it sets a 90-day refresh rule for purchased data unless the entity is already regulated under the FCRA or the GLBA. The FCRA carve-out matters in practice: a screening provider operating under the federal statute sits inside it, which is why this duty is easier to state than to apply.
There is an enforcement layer above that. Section 411.0835 suspends DPS’s release of criminal history to an entity for a year after three or more violations of the false-information provision at §552.1425. A year-long loss of access is a serious operational consequence and it is not the kind of penalty that shows up in a compliance checklist.
The statewide case search has its own honesty problem, and the state is the one being honest. re:SearchTX describes itself as an unofficial copy drawn from eFiling participation and makes no warranty of completeness. That is a court system telling you not to treat its own portal as authoritative, which is worth knowing before a coverage claim rests on 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 Texas adds on top of that floor, and where it departs from it.
What Texas law adds
Its own consumer reporting statute
Yes, at Tex. Bus. & Com. Code ch. 20, added in 1997 and renumbered in 2013. Its most recent relevant amendment is S.B. 1037 in 2019. The chapter’s currency was checked against the 88th Legislature and it holds: the only enactment touching it is H.B. 4611, a nonsubstantive recodification whose own text says no substantive change is intended, effective 1 April 2025, and whose only effect on the chapter is to re-point one security-freeze exemption at its successor sections.
Tex. Bus. & Com. Code ch. 20 · H.B. 4611, 88th Legislature
Ban-the-box
None statewide. Texas has never had a state statute restricting when an employer may ask about criminal history. The city layer was checked against each city’s own legislative record: Austin enacted a private-employer ordinance in 2016, Dallas shows two briefing items from 2022 that were never enacted, and San Antonio shows a single 2016 council consideration request that was never enacted. Houston could not be checked, so nothing is asserted about it. The statewide position is that the field is preempted, which is covered in the city section above.
Tex. Lab. Code §1.005
Lookback limits
Seven years, and Texas sets the starting point itself. Under §20.05(a)(4) the period runs from disposition, release or parole rather than from arrest, and it reaches arrest and indictment as well as conviction.
Tex. Bus. & Com. Code §20.05(a)(4)
Non-conviction reporting
No categorical bar. Texas limits non-conviction records in time rather than in principle, so an arrest or an indictment inside the seven-year window is reportable. This is the structural difference between Texas and California or New York, where the record is off limits regardless of age.
Tex. Bus. & Com. Code §20.05(a)(4)
Salary threshold
Texas sets its own, at §20.05(b)(3), and the figure is $75,000. That is the same number as the federal exemption, so the state and federal answers coincide and there is no Texas threshold that reaches further than federal law already does.
Tex. Bus. & Com. Code §20.05(b)(3)
Cannabis
No employment protection. Texas has no adult-use law, and the Compassionate Use Program at Health & Safety Code ch. 487 is a medical-access program that creates no employment right. Nothing here restrains an employer from acting on a cannabis record or a positive test.
Tex. Health & Safety Code ch. 487
Credit checks
Not established in this pass. Chapter 20 governs consumer reports generally and does not single out employment credit checks the way Vermont’s statute or California’s position-based limits do. This row is recorded as unverified rather than as a clean negative, because no Texas provision was read that addresses employment credit checks directly.
Automated decision law
None that reaches hiring. Texas enacted TRAIGA, H.B. 149 of 2025, and it excludes the employment context by definition and contains no equivalent of a consequential-decision term. A Texas employer running an automated screening tool is not subject to a state automated-hiring law, which is the opposite of the position in Illinois and Colorado.
H.B. 149, 89th Legislature (TRAIGA)
The state’s own criminal history
Confidential by statute and not directly purchasable. Government Code §411.083(a) closes DPS criminal history record information, and §411.0845 routes access through a subscription clearinghouse. Parties that hold and resell it carry duties under §411.0851, including destruction on notice of an expunction or nondisclosure and a 90-day refresh rule for purchased data, with a year-long suspension of DPS access available under §411.0835 after repeated false-information violations.
Tex. Gov’t Code §411.083(a) · Tex. Gov’t Code §411.0845 · Tex. Gov’t Code §411.0851
The statute that surprises people
The clock that starts at disposition
Tex. Bus. & Com. Code §20.05(a)(4)
Most lookback rules count from an event that is easy to pin down and hard to argue about, which is usually the arrest or the filing. Texas counts from somewhere else. Under §20.05(a)(4) the seven-year period runs from the date of disposition, release or parole, and Texas is explicit that the provision covers arrest and indictment as well as conviction.
Two consequences follow, and they point in opposite directions. A charge that was filed and disposed of quickly can be reportable for longer than a federal-clock reading would suggest, because the clock does not begin at the arrest that preceded it. And a charge that was disposed of recently stays reportable for a full seven years from that disposition, even if the underlying conduct is much older. The same record therefore ages out on a different date here than it would under the federal rule, and the difference is not small.
This is a time limit rather than a prohibition. Texas has no categorical bar on non-conviction reporting, so an arrest or an indictment inside the window is reportable, and the state’s protection is that the window eventually closes rather than that the record is ever off limits. That puts Texas with Washington and Minnesota and against California and New York, and the practical difference is that a Texas applicant’s remedy is patience rather than a prohibition.
The salary threshold is the other half of the chapter and it has a feature worth noticing. Section 20.05(b)(3) sets Texas’s own figure at $75,000, which is the same number as the federal exemption. Texas set its own rule and arrived at the federal answer, so unlike New York at $25,000 or Washington at $20,000 there is no Texas threshold that reaches further than federal law already does. A compliance configuration that applies the federal figure to Texas is correct, and it is correct by coincidence rather than by deference.
Cities that go further than the state
- Austin. Austin enacted a fair-chance hiring ordinance at city code chapter 4-15, effective 4 April 2016, and the City’s own description says it “places restrictions on certain private employers on when they can ask about a job applicant’s criminal history and how that information can be used.” The duties were specific: an individualized assessment under §§4-15-2(G) and 4-15-4(E), written notice of adverse action including notice that the decision rested on criminal history under §4-15-4(F), and a civil penalty of up to $500 per violation, with §4-15-8(8) making each job a separate violation for the two core prohibitions. The state then took the field. H.B. 2127, the 2023 Texas Regulatory Consistency Act, added Labor Code §1.005, which provides that a municipality may not adopt, enforce or maintain an ordinance regulating conduct in a field occupied by the Labor Code and that such an ordinance is void, unenforceable and inconsistent with the code. Subsection (b) names employment leave, hiring practices, breaks, employment benefits and scheduling practices as fields that are occupied. The Act took effect 1 September 2023, because the two-thirds threshold for immediate effect was not met in either chamber. Read against that text, Austin’s private-employer ordinance is void. That conclusion rests on the statute, not on a ruling: no decision construing §1.005 against a fair-chance ordinance was found. The Act does preserve a city’s authority to set policy for its own employees, so a municipal hiring policy applied to the city’s own workforce is a different question from a mandate on private employers. Austin City Code ch. 4-15 · Tex. Lab. Code §1.005 · H.B. 2127, 88th Legislature
Reporting limits at a glance
Every figure below is against Texas law. Where a row says “federal only”, the state has set nothing and 15 U.S.C. §1681c governs.
| Dimension | Limit | Source and qualification |
|---|---|---|
| Lookback, non-conviction | 7 years from disposition | §20.05(a)(4). The clock runs from disposition, release or parole, not from arrest, and it covers arrest and indictment. |
| Lookback, conviction | 7 years from disposition | Same provision and same starting point. Texas applies one clock to both rather than splitting them. |
| Non-conviction, categorical bar | None | Texas limits these records in time, not in principle. Reportable inside the window. |
| Salary threshold | $75,000 | §20.05(b)(3). Texas’s own figure, equal to the federal exemption, so the two answers coincide. |
| Ban-the-box | None | No state statute. Municipal hiring-practice regulation is preempted by Labor Code §1.005. |
| City fair-chance ordinances | Preempted | Austin ch. 4-15 was in force from 2016 and is void under §1.005 as of 1 September 2023, on the text of that provision. |
| Cannabis | No protection | No adult-use law, and the Compassionate Use Program creates no employment right. |
| Automated decision law | None for hiring | TRAIGA excludes the employment context by definition. |
| Statewide repository | Not directly accessible | §411.083(a) makes DPS criminal history confidential; access runs through a clearinghouse under §411.0845. |
| Private-compiler duties | Destroy on notice | §411.0851. Destruction and cessation on notice of expunction or nondisclosure, plus a 90-day refresh rule with an FCRA and GLBA carve-out. |
Adverse action here
The federal sequence applies unchanged: pre-adverse action notice with the report and the summary of rights, a reasonable opportunity to respond, then the adverse action notice with the agency’s details and a dispute route. The FCRA article sets it out in full. Texas adds nothing to that sequence, and with the Austin ordinance void there is no city-level adverse notice duty left either.
What Texas adds sits on the data side rather than the notice side. The destruction duty at §411.0851 is triggered by receiving notice of an expunction or an order of nondisclosure, not by an adverse action, and it runs on the agency rather than the employer. A Texas process that is correct at every notice step can still be wrong here, because this obligation is discharged by a data-handling routine rather than by a letter.
The 90-day refresh rule is the same shape of obligation. It applies to purchased data and it has a carve-out for entities already regulated under the FCRA or the GLBA, which most screening providers are. The practical effect is that the rule binds hardest on the parties least likely to have a compliance function, while a regulated consumer reporting agency satisfies it by the ordinary operation of its own accuracy duties.
One consequence of preemption is worth separating out, because it runs the opposite way from most state-law changes. An employer with a multi-city process may still be applying Austin’s individualized-assessment and adverse-notice steps to Texas hires. Those steps are no longer required, and applying them is not a violation of anything, so this is a cost rather than an exposure. It is still worth knowing which of your steps exist because a city required them and a state has since said the city could not.
Screening in Texas: what your process needs
- Confirm the search specification applies the Texas clock from disposition, release or parole. A configuration built on the federal arrest-based reading will suppress records that are lawfully reportable and, in the other direction, retain ones that have aged out.
- Confirm no Texas process still treats non-conviction records as categorically barred. Texas has no such bar, and importing one from California or New York would suppress reportable information.
- Confirm a Texas coverage statement distinguishes the felony layer from the misdemeanor layer. District courts holding felonies do not map to county lines, so a county count describes one layer and implies the other.
- Confirm any reliance on a Texas statewide criminal history product reflects §411.083(a). If the source is a clearinghouse rather than the state, say so, because it is a different claim about provenance.
- Confirm the destruction-on-notice duty at §411.0851 is implemented as a routine, not as a case-by-case response. It is triggered by notice of an expunction or nondisclosure arriving, which is an event nobody is watching for unless something is.
- Confirm the 90-day refresh rule for purchased data is met, and whether the entity relies on the FCRA or GLBA carve-out rather than on the refresh itself.
- Confirm no city-level fair-chance step is being applied to Texas hires because Austin once required it. The requirement is gone, and the step is a cost with no compliance value.
- Confirm no cannabis accommodation step has been imported from another state. Texas protects patients in the medical program in ways that do not reach hiring decisions.
Related states
What we do
Texas is the state where the clock is the thing. A screening provider that gets Texas right has to be able to say what its lookback starts from, which court layer it searched, and where its criminal history actually came from, because the state answers all three questions differently from the federal default. If a coverage statement for Texas would read the same anywhere else, it is not describing Texas.
Sources
- Tex. Bus. & Com. Code ch. 20, Regulation of Consumer Credit Reporting Agencies
- Tex. Bus. & Com. Code §20.05(a)(4), reporting period running from disposition, release or parole
- Tex. Bus. & Com. Code §20.05(b)(3), $75,000 salary threshold
- H.B. 4611, 88th Legislature, nonsubstantive recodification, effective 1 April 2025
- H.B. 2127, 88th Legislature, Texas Regulatory Consistency Act
- Tex. Lab. Code §1.005, preemption of municipal regulation including hiring practices
- Tex. Gov’t Code §411.083(a), confidentiality of criminal history record information
- Tex. Gov’t Code §411.0845, access through a subscription clearinghouse
- Tex. Gov’t Code §411.0851, destruction on notice and the 90-day refresh rule
- Austin City Code ch. 4-15, Fair Chance Hiring
- Tex. Health & Safety Code ch. 487, Compassionate Use Program
- H.B. 149, 89th Legislature, Texas Responsible AI Governance Act
- Texas Office of Court Administration, re:SearchTX and district court geographical jurisdiction
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.