WI · state guide

Wisconsin background screening law

How the courts here are organized

Wisconsin has 72 counties and one circuit court in each of them, and the circuit court is where felony and misdemeanor cases live. Wis. Stat. § 753.03 gives the circuit courts the general jurisdiction prescribed by article VII of the constitution and the power to hear and determine, within their respective circuits, all civil and criminal actions and proceedings unless exclusive jurisdiction is given to some other court. The clerk of the circuit court in each county is the custodian of the file.

The circuits are grouped into judicial administrative districts, and § 753.06 enumerates them county by county with the number of branches each circuit holds. Counting the counties named across the districts gives exactly 72, matching the 72 Wisconsin counties with none missing and none repeated. One feature of that enumeration is a trap for anyone reading it quickly: there is no 6th judicial administrative district.

That is not a gap in the text. The statute carries a Comment recording that pursuant to S. Ct. Order 18-01, 2018 WI 33, issued 11 April 2018 and effective 31 July 2018, the court redistributed the counties that constituted the 6th judicial administrative district into other districts, and that as of the effective date of that order there is no 6th judicial administrative district. So the numbering runs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, and a reader who finds subsection (6) missing has found a real feature of current law rather than a failed page load.

Below the circuit court there is a municipal court layer, and it is not a court of record. § 755.01(1) creates a municipal court in and for each city, town and village, calls it a coequal branch of the municipal government subject to the superintending authority of the supreme court through the chief judge of the judicial administrative district, and ends by providing that any municipal court established under the section is not a court of record. Its jurisdiction is forfeiture-only: § 755.045(1) gives it exclusive jurisdiction over an action in which a municipality seeks to impose forfeitures for violations of its own ordinances, with exceptions.

The consequence for search design is that the county is the unit and the state index is the shortcut. Each of the 72 counties keeps its own file through its clerk of circuit court, and the same data is published statewide at no charge through CCAP. That combination is what makes Wisconsin one of the few states where a statewide criminal record search is genuinely a court-records search rather than a repository request, and where the searcher does not have to be the subject or have the subject’s consent to run it.

There is a second repository, and it is a different kind of system. The Department of Justice maintains a fingerprint-based criminal identification file under Wis. Stat. § 165.84, cooperating with the FBI, and that is not a public records system. The text of § 165.84 available to this pass is a 2017-18 statute book, so this page names the section and takes no duty, fee, turnaround or recipient rule from it.

Wisconsin is the state where the gap is on the other side. Nothing about the circuit court docket is closed: it is published statewide, it is free, and the governing policy forbids the custodian from asking who is requesting or why. The limits that do exist are specific and all of them are recorded in the policy itself.

The first is closed case types. WCCA "shall contain information from only those portions of the case files generated by the Consolidated Court Automation Programs (CCAP) that are open records and otherwise accessible by law to an individual", and it "shall not contain information from closed records that would not otherwise be accessible by law to an individual because of specific statutory exceptions, such as juvenile court records, guardianship proceedings, and other such case types or records." Juvenile and guardianship matters are the named examples rather than the whole list.

The second is expunged convictions, and the policy is unusually explicit about how they behave. WCCA does not contain the record of any criminal conviction expunged by the circuit court; when a court orders expunction the underlying CCAP database is modified to remove the record, and when the update transfers to WCCA the previous record no longer appears. Requests for such records "report only that no record has been found, in the same manner that WCCA would otherwise report null searches." The policy adds, in its own words, that WCCA is not responsible for the fact that a search run before the expunction shows the conviction and a search run after it does not.

The third is field-level omissions. The day is removed from the date of birth in non-criminal cases, the driver’s license number is removed in traffic cases, and the "additional text" fields entered before 1 July 2001 are absent in all cases. Victim, witness and juror names are not available at all.

The fourth is what the index is not. WCCA "contains only information from the CCAP database from those counties using all or part of the CCAP system", and the policy states that it does not include gubernatorial pardons, appellate decisions and administrative agency determinations, because extraneous actions are not normally reflected in the CCAP database or the circuit court files. A pardon therefore does not clear a WCCA record, and an appellate reversal is not shown against the circuit court entry.

The fifth is county coverage, and it is a start-date question rather than a holes question. The WCCA table headed "When Wisconsin counties began using CCAP" records a full case management system start date for each county, and the dates run from August 1991 for Iowa and Marathon to December 2001 for Outagamie. A search of the statewide index is therefore complete for a county only back to that county’s own start date, and a 1990 conviction in a county that went live in 1995 is not found by a WCCA search. The policy also records that the table tracks three separate go-live dates per county, for the full case management system, for civil cases and for probate cases.

The routing consequence is that Wisconsin work can be done against a free, anonymous, statewide index, and the coverage statement that matters is the county start date rather than the state’s name. It is also worth stating what the index does not replace: a circuit court file, where the disposition detail and the underlying documents live, and the Department of Justice criminal identification file, which is fingerprint-based and is not a public records system at all.

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

What Wisconsin law adds

Reporting limits at a glance

Every figure below is against Wisconsin 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.

The rule Wisconsin adds sits in front of the process rather than inside it, and it is about the request rather than the decision. Section 111.335(2)(a) prohibits requesting arrest-record information from an applicant or an employee, so an adverse action that rests on arrest-record data raises a question about the request before it raises a question about the decision. Where the record is a pending charge or a bondability case, the request was lawful and the analysis moves to § 111.335(2)(b) and the substantial-relationship test.

The distinction between arrest record and conviction record is the one an adverse-action letter has to get right. They are separate protected bases at § 111.321, they are defined separately at § 111.32(1) and (3), and they are governed by different subsections of § 111.335. A letter that describes a charge as a conviction, or that treats a delinquency adjudication or a less than honorable discharge as something outside the conviction-record definition, has mis-stated the record and not merely characterized it.

The substantial-relationship test is the substantive one for a conviction. Section 111.335(3)(a)1 permits refusal, barring or termination where the circumstances of the offense substantially relate to the circumstances of the particular job or licensed activity, and there is no time limit attached to the conviction. That is a two-sided test: it permits consideration indefinitely, and it requires the relationship to be shown rather than assumed.

Agency status changes the procedure. Section 111.335(4) governs licensing refusals and requires written reasons and an opportunity to show rehabilitation, with a list of what counts as competent evidence of rehabilitation. Where the role is licensed rather than employed, the adverse sequence has a state procedural layer on top of the federal one. Subsection (3)(e) separately gives an educational agency an outright power to refuse to employ or to terminate anyone convicted of a felony who has not been pardoned.

The dispute route is worth using on Wisconsin records for a reason the state itself publishes. An expunged conviction is removed from the CCAP database and does not appear on WCCA at all, so a search reports that no record has been found. A report that shows an expunged conviction therefore did not come from the current WCCA data, which makes the discrepancy checkable against the source rather than a matter of argument.

Screening in Wisconsin: what your process needs

• Remove the arrest-record question from the application, from the interview guide and from every form the employer sends, including to current employees. Section 111.335(2)(a) prohibits the request on an application form or otherwise, and it is not limited to applicants.
• Do not read the rule as a ban-the-box rule. There is no stage at which the question becomes permissible for an arrest record, and the only exceptions are a pending charge and bondability, both of which are written into the paragraph.
• Treat the definition of arrest record as covering non-convictions. Section 111.32(1) reaches questioning, apprehension, custody or detention, being held for investigation, arrest, charge, indictment and trial.
• Check the size question once and stop worrying about it. There is no small-employer exemption: one employee brings an employer inside § 111.32(6)(a), and the definition expressly includes the legislature and the courts.
• Keep arrest record and conviction record as two separate fields. They are separate protected bases at § 111.321 and they are governed by different subsections of § 111.335, so a single criminal-history flag will blur the one distinction that decides the analysis.
• Apply the substantial-relationship test to a conviction, and document it. Section 111.335(3)(a)1 permits refusal, barring or termination where the circumstances of the offense substantially relate to the circumstances of the particular job, and it sets no time limit.
• Watch the conviction-record definition. Section 111.32(3) includes a delinquency adjudication, a less than honorable discharge, probation, a fine, imprisonment, extended supervision and parole.
• Where the role is licensed, add the state procedure on top of the federal one. Section 111.335(4) requires written reasons for a refusal, an opportunity to show rehabilitation, and it lists what counts as competent evidence of rehabilitation, including a DD-214.
• Expect a Wisconsin search to be run against an open index. WCCA requires no identification and no stated purpose and does not charge for website access, so the check does not depend on the subject’s cooperation and does not have to be justified to the custodian.
• State the county start date in the coverage language. The per-county CCAP start dates run from August 1991 to December 2001, so a WCCA search is complete for a county only back to that county’s own go-live date.
• Do not describe a WCCA hit as the whole file. WCCA excludes juvenile court records, guardianship proceedings and other closed case types, and it does not carry gubernatorial pardons, appellate decisions or administrative agency determinations.
• Do not treat a pardon or an appellate reversal as clearing the entry. Extraneous actions are not normally reflected in the CCAP database or in the circuit court files, so neither appears against the original entry.
• Treat an expunged conviction as absent from the index and say so. The policy removes the record from CCAP and WCCA reports a search for it as no record found, in the same manner as a null search.
• Run the federal sequence in full. Wisconsin adds no state pre-request or adverse-action notice duty, and none of the federal steps is displaced by state law.
• Do not assume a security freeze stops an employment check. Section 100.54(8)(j) excludes a release for employment purposes from the freeze section.
• Do not treat a CBD certification as an employment protection. Wisconsin has no cannabis employment-protection statute, and whether certified CBD is a lawful product under § 111.321 was not resolved.

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.
• Michigan. Michigan lets an applicant withhold a misdemeanor arrest that led to no conviction even when answering under oath, and its state criminal history product deletes each result after seven days while warning it may not be accepted. Its limited-jurisdiction courts sit on city and township lines rather than county lines, so the county is not the unit of search.
• 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

Wisconsin is the state where the employer breaks the law by asking, not by reporting. Section 111.335(2)(a) makes it employment discrimination to request arrest-record information from an applicant, an employee or, in the statute’s words, any other individual, on an application form or otherwise, and § 111.32(1) defines arrest record to include being questioned, being held for investigation, a charge, an indictment and a trial. Conviction record is a separate basis with no time limit and a substantial-relationship test. There is no size threshold, because the definition reaches any person employing at least one individual, and it expressly includes the legislature and the courts. Underneath that, Wisconsin publishes its circuit court docket to anyone at no charge without asking who is asking or why, with per-county start dates running from August 1991 to December 2001 and expunged convictions removed and reported as no record found. We search the index, state the county start dates, and keep charge, non-conviction and conviction as three different fields, because in Wisconsin they are three different questions.

Sources

• Wis. Stat. § 111.335, discrimination because of arrest record or conviction record
• Wis. Stat. § 111.32, definitions, including arrest record, conviction record and employer
• Wis. Stat. § 111.321, prohibited bases of discrimination
• Wis. Stat. § 111.322, prohibited practices, including the inquiry prohibition
• Wis. Stat. § 100.54, access to credit reports and the security freeze
• Wis. Stat. § 100.545, security freeze for a protected consumer
• Wis. Stat. § 753.03, jurisdiction of the circuit courts
• Wis. Stat. § 753.06, judicial circuits, the enumeration the 72-county count was made from
• Wis. Stat. § 755.01 and § 755.045, municipal courts
• Wis. Stat. § 758.19 and § 758.20, the director of state courts and the Wisconsin Circuit Court Access Internet site
• Wis. Stat. § 973.015, special disposition and expungement
• Wis. Stat. § 961.32, cannabidiol possession with a certification
• Director of State Courts Policy on Disclosure of Public Information Over the Internet, published inside the Wisconsin Circuit Court Access application, including the county start-date table headed When Wisconsin counties began using CCAP
• Route note: docs.legis.wisconsin.gov is network-blocked from this environment, so every Wisconsin statute on this page was read through an Internet Archive raw replay of the Legislature’s own server. Section pages there are JavaScript-chunked and a long section has to be fetched subsection by subsection, which is how § 753.06(10) was read whole. The WCCA policy and its county table were read from the application bundle at wcca.wicourts.gov, because the site shell is empty and www.wicourts.gov returns HTTP 403. Section 165.84 was reachable only as a 2017-18 text and is not quoted anywhere on this page.

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.