WY · state guide

Wyoming background screening law

How the courts here are organized

Wyoming is a judicial-district state, not a county state, and the distinction is the one that decides how a criminal record search is scoped. There are twenty-three counties and nine judicial districts, and the two court tiers that hear criminal cases are both organized on the district. The felony and the misdemeanor from a single incident do sit in different courts, but the clerk who holds the file is not necessarily in the county where the incident happened.

The district courts are the trial courts of general jurisdiction. The Judicial Branch describes them in its own words: "The district courts are the trial courts of general jurisdiction in the state. The jurisdiction of the district courts is unlimited except for civil cases under $50,000, small claims cases, and misdemeanors, which are handled by the circuit courts." The same page gives the two counts a search has to reconcile against: "A district court exists in all 23 counties, and the counties are organized into nine judicial districts", and "There are 27 district judges in the state, organized into nine judicial districts. District court is held in each county seat so that some judges must regularly travel to all counties within their district to hear the cases that arise there."

The circuit courts are the limited-jurisdiction tier, and the unusual feature is written into their establishing section. The Judicial Branch states: "The geographic boundaries of the circuit courts are the same as the nine judicial districts for the district courts, and there are circuit courts in all 23 counties." W.S. 5-9-102(a) says the same thing in statutory form: "a circuit court is hereby established for each judicial district of the state of Wyoming enumerated in W.S. 5-3-101, and the boundaries of each circuit court shall be the same as those of each judicial district enumerated therein." A circuit court's territory is therefore a judicial district and not a county, and a district with several counties has circuit courts sitting in several of them.

The tier split is statutory and it is clean. W.S. 5-9-129 provides that "Circuit courts have original jurisdiction in all misdemeanor criminal cases", and W.S. 5-9-132(b) that "Preliminary examinations for persons charged with a felony shall be conducted by the circuit court judge or magistrate", with (c) dispensing with preliminary examinations for misdemeanors. W.S. 5-9-108 makes the circuit court "a court of record". A felony therefore commonly produces a circuit court file for the preliminary examination and a district court file for the disposition, and the two files are in two courts.

Assignment runs in both directions, which is the second unusual feature. W.S. 5-3-102(a) provides that "All district judges in the state shall have concurrent jurisdiction throughout the state and for purposes of assignment, shall have concurrent jurisdiction throughout the state with all circuit court judges", and W.S. 5-9-130 gives circuit judges the mirror of it. W.S. 5-9-131 lets a circuit judge assign a case to a district or chancery court judge. The Judicial Branch adds the practical form: "Circuit court judges may perform judicial duties for the district courts at the request of district court judges, and many do assist regularly on routine district court matters throughout the State."

Two things are worth recording because a source that predates them will mislead. First, the county court tier is gone: Title 5, Chapter 5 is still headed "County Courts" and every section in it is marked "Renumbered as 5-9-xxx By Laws 2000, Ch. 24, § 3" or repealed, and the Judicial Branch records that "In 2000, the legislature passed the Court Consolidation Act which transitioned all counties into the circuit court system." Second, W.S. 5-6-101 creates a municipal court in each incorporated city or town "for the trial of all offenses arising under ordinances of said incorporated city or town", and W.S. 5-9-105 lets a municipality petition the supreme court to move its ordinance jurisdiction into the circuit court instead. A single incident can therefore produce a district court file, a circuit court file and a municipal court file.

The operational consequence of the district structure is that a county-by-county run is the wrong shape for Wyoming. Circuit court territory is a judicial district under W.S. 5-9-102(a), district judges are assigned across the state under W.S. 5-3-102(a), and district court is held in every county seat precisely because the judge travels. A file naming the county of the offense may therefore be held by a clerk in a different county of the same district, and a search that stops at the county line can miss it.

The repository route is the other half of the routing question, and it is a list rather than a service. W.S. 7-19-106(a) enumerates forty-two recipients and closes with W.S. 7-19-106(d), which forbids an agency or its employee to "confirm the existence or nonexistence of criminal history record information to any person that would not be eligible to receive the information". An employer or a screening firm is not on the list. W.S. 7-19-106(j) then forbids a recipient to release or use what it received "for any purpose not included in the original request except that the record subject may make further dissemination in his discretion", so a recipient agency cannot pass a result on. The route that does exist is the voluntary check at W.S. 7-19-106(k)(ii), and it is a criminal justice agency mediation rather than an account, which is why it is the fact a Wyoming screening process has to be built around.

What the record system misses follows from the same sections. W.S. 7-19-102(b) puts municipal ordinance violations outside the Criminal History Record Act entirely, and W.S. 5-6-101 keeps a municipal court in each incorporated city or town to hear them, so an ordinance conviction is a court file and not a repository entry. W.S. 7-19-104(b) requires the repository to contain disposition as well as arrest data only "to the maximum extent feasible", which means an arrest with no recorded disposition can lawfully sit there. And W.S. 7-19-103(a)(vii) defines "Nonconviction data" without attaching any consequence to it: the category exists in the definitions and nowhere else in the Act, no destruction or sealing duty follows from it, and no provision bars an employer from using such a record.

The court-access side is thin in a way that is worth stating plainly rather than working around. The Judicial Branch's own FAQ answers "How do I view the record in my case?" for the district court with "Case records can be viewed by the public at the public access terminal at the office of the clerk of district court. This is the PASS system", and for the circuit court with the corresponding answer naming the circuit court clerk's office. A sweep of the whole wyocourts.gov domain finds no public case-search page, and the only case-data application in the archive index resolves to a script shell. A Wyoming county run is an in-person or correspondent clerk exercise in each of twenty-three counties, or a repository check through the criminal justice agency route, and there is no third option.

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

What Wyoming law adds

Reporting limits at a glance

Every figure below is against Wyoming 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.

Wyoming adds no state notice duty, no state waiting period and no state dispute route for a criminal-history report. There is no state analog of the FCRA's employment-reporting duties, because the only consumer reporting statute on the books is a credit act and its definitions do not reach this work: W.S. 40-12-501(a)(iv) confines a credit report to information used "primarily for personal, family or household purposes", and W.S. 40-12-501(a)(xi) defines the act itself as W.S. 40-12-501 through 40-12-511.

What Wyoming does supply is a statement right that belongs in the file before a letter is written. W.S. 7-13-1401(f) provides that a person who has received an order of expungement under that section "may respond to any inquiry as though the arrest, or charge or charges did not occur, unless otherwise provided by law", and W.S. 7-13-1502(m) provides that an expungement under that section "shall restore any rights removed as a result of the conviction for which the expungement has been granted". A Wyoming application form that asks about arrests, or a report that carries an arrest the person has answered as never having happened, is the point at which this becomes a dispute rather than a clerical matter.

The repository route sets a limit on what a letter can honestly say it relied on. W.S. 7-19-106(a) permits dissemination only to the enumerated recipients, W.S. 7-19-106(d) forbids confirming even the existence or nonexistence of a record to anyone not eligible to receive it, and W.S. 7-19-106(j) forbids a recipient passing a result on. A Wyoming check that did not run through the W.S. 7-19-106(k)(ii) voluntary route, with the subject's consent on file and the request forwarded by a criminal justice agency, was not a repository check and the letter should not describe it as one.

The identifier trail is worth planning for, because the repository route is a fingerprint route. W.S. 7-19-106(c) requires the subject's fingerprints to accompany any request that does not come from a criminal justice agency or the department of family services, and W.S. 7-19-108(b) allows the fingerprinting agency to charge for taking them. An adverse action file that relies on a DCI result should hold the consent, the forwarding agency's identity and the fingerprint record, because those are the three things the access rule turned on.

One further state provision belongs in the sequence where a county search answers the question instead of the repository. W.S. 7-13-1401(d) requires the court that grants an expungement to "place the court file under seal, available only for inspection by order of that court" and to transmit a certified copy of the order to the division of criminal investigation, and W.S. 7-13-1501(g) and W.S. 7-13-1502 do the same on the conviction routes. A court-sourced report should be reconciling against sealed files and not only against the repository, because the two are updated by different acts by different offices.

Screening in Wyoming: what your process needs

• Do not plan a Wyoming search as a county-by-county run. Circuit court territory is a judicial district under W.S. 5-9-102(a) and district judges are assignable across the state under W.S. 5-3-102(a), so scope the search to the judicial district and confirm which county clerk holds the file.
• Expect three possible court files for one incident: a district court file for the felony, a circuit court file for the misdemeanor and the preliminary examination, and a municipal court file for an ordinance violation under W.S. 5-6-101.
• Do not treat the DCI repository as an account you can open. W.S. 7-19-106(a) permits dissemination only to the enumerated recipients and W.S. 7-19-106(d) forbids confirming even the existence of a record to anyone else.
• If you use the repository at all, use the W.S. 7-19-106(k)(ii) voluntary route and hold the three things it turns on: the subject's consent, a criminal justice agency in Wyoming as the forwarding applicant, and the W.S. 7-19-108 fee.
• Collect the fingerprint card with the consent, because W.S. 7-19-106(c) requires the subject's fingerprints on any request that does not come from a criminal justice agency or the department of family services.
• Budget the repository fee at fifteen dollars for an employer applicant, ten for a youth or family-violence volunteer organization checking a prospective volunteer, five more for fingerprinting, plus the FBI charge where a national check runs under federal P.L. 92-544.
• Do not claim a state lookback when you set your own reporting window. Wyoming sets no period after which an arrest or conviction becomes unreportable, so the seven-year rule is federal and the state adds nothing.
• Do not assume a county court. Title 5, Chapter 5 is dissolved law and every section in it was renumbered into W.S. 5-9-xxx by Laws 2000, Ch. 24, § 3.
• Read an arrest with no disposition as a live record, not as a gap. W.S. 7-19-104(b) requires disposition data alongside arrest data only to the maximum extent feasible, and nothing compels a non-conviction record's removal.
• Treat W.S. 7-19-103(a)(vii) non-conviction data as defined but unprotected: the category carries no destruction duty, no sealing duty and no bar on an employer's use.
• Where a subject says a Wyoming arrest or charge did not happen, check W.S. 7-13-1401(f) before disputing. An expunged person may answer an inquiry as though it had not occurred.
• Where a subject claims a Wyoming conviction has been restored rather than erased, check W.S. 7-13-1502(m) and W.S. 7-13-1401(j)(i) together: the repository record is reclassified, not destroyed, and investigatory files are expressly outside the definition.
• Reconcile a court-sourced Wyoming report against sealed files, not only against the repository, because W.S. 7-13-1401(d), W.S. 7-13-1501(g) and W.S. 7-13-1502 update the two by different acts by different offices.
• For a licensed occupation, check W.S. 33-1-304 before treating a conviction as disqualifying: the twenty-year lookback at (c) and the pre-application determination right at (e) both bind the board.
• Do not apply a cannabis overlay to Wyoming. There is no medical program and no adult-use program, so there is no cardholder or lawful-use protection, and a policy built on the assumption that one exists is wrong in this state.
• Do not apply a state privacy overlay either. W.S. 9-21-202(a) binds a government entity, and no Wyoming statute regulates a private employer's or a screening firm's handling of applicant data.

Related states

• 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.
• Colorado. Colorado’s bar on reporting sealed, expunged and non-conviction records sits in its consumer credit reporting act, where a sealing bill put it in 2022, and the employment salary exception that could have switched the act off for senior roles was deleted the same year and the exceptions subsection replaced in 2023 with a single mortgage-sized credit exception, so the bar and the seven-year cap reach every Colorado employment report at any pay. Its automated decision-making law names employment among the domains it covers and sets the trigger at technology used to materially influence a hiring decision, with duties from 1 January 2027.

What we do

Wyoming is an absence state, and the absences are the useful part. There is no ban-the-box in either sector, no salary history restriction, no automated hiring statute, no state lookback and no consumer reporting statute that reaches a screening report, because the only one on the books defines a credit report around credit for personal, family or household purposes. What shapes the work instead is the court structure and the repository. Nine judicial districts and twenty-three counties, with a circuit court whose boundaries are the districts and district judges assignable across the state, mean a county-scoped search is the wrong instrument. The DCI repository is an enumerated list of forty-two permitted recipients with no employer and no consumer reporting agency on it, and the only route for a third party is the voluntary check at W.S. 7-19-106(k)(ii), which needs the subject's consent, a Wyoming criminal justice agency to forward the application, and a fingerprint card. Expungement is a reclassification at the repository rather than destruction, with the police file expressly outside the definition, and the arrest and no-conviction route at W.S. 7-13-1401 is the one place the state gives a person a right to answer an inquiry as though the event had not occurred. Our Wyoming work routes the repository question through the criminal justice agency or not at all, scopes court searches to the judicial district, holds the consent and fingerprint record behind any repository result, and states which court answered the question. If your current vendor runs Wyoming county by county, or reports a DCI check without saying which applicant route it used, this is where that shows.

Sources

• Wyo. Stat. § 7-19-106, Access to, and dissemination of, information, the enumerated list at (a) and the voluntary check at (k)(ii)
• Wyo. Stat. § 7-19-107 and § 7-19-109, the central repository and the subject-initiated inspection and correction route
• Wyo. Stat. § 7-19-108, Fees, including the fifteen dollar cap at (a) and the fingerprinting fee at (b)
• Wyo. Stat. § 7-19-102 and § 7-19-103, scope, and the definitions of conviction data and nonconviction data
• Wyo. Stat. § 7-19-201, State or national criminal history record information, the fingerprint mandate list at (a)
• Wyo. Stat. § 7-13-1401, expungement of arrest and no-conviction records, and the definition of expungement at (j)(i)
• Wyo. Stat. § 7-13-1501 and § 7-13-1502, expungement of misdemeanor and felony convictions
• Wyo. Stat. § 40-12-501, § 40-12-505, the Wyoming Consumer Credit Reporting Act definitions and the security freeze provisions
• Wyo. Stat. § 33-1-304, Considering criminal convictions; pre-application determinations, including the twenty-year lookback at (c)
• Wyo. Stat. § 35-7-1014, § 35-7-1031 and § 35-7-1063, the controlled substances schedules, the practitioner prohibition and the hemp exemption
• Wyo. Stat. § 5-3-101 and § 5-3-102, judicial districts and district judge allocations
• Wyo. Stat. § 5-9-102, § 5-9-129 and § 5-9-132, circuit court establishment, misdemeanor jurisdiction and preliminary examinations, with § 5-6-101 on municipal courts and § 5-2-119 on appeals
• Wyo. Stat. § 9-21-201 and § 9-21-202, Data Privacy-Government Entities, read to establish that no private-sector privacy statute exists
• Wyoming Judicial Branch, About the Courts, District Courts and Circuit Courts, including the nine-district and twenty-three-county counts, read through Internet Archive raw replay of www.wyocourts.gov
• Wyoming Judicial Branch, Common Questions About Expungements, and the Frequently Asked Questions answer on PASS terminal access, read through Internet Archive raw replay
• Route note: wyoleg.gov serves its statutes as whole-title compressed PDFs at /statutes/compress/titleNN.pdf, all forty-two of which were downloaded and converted with pdftotext, because its HTML side is a JavaScript single-page application that served a byte-identical 11,232-byte fallback shell for the homepage, for /Legislation/2023 and for a deliberately wrong path. courts.state.wy.us is behind an AWS WAF JavaScript challenge returning HTTP 202 with a 2,181-byte shell, so the Judicial Branch pages were read through Internet Archive raw replay of www.wyocourts.gov using the id_ modifier. No Wyoming municipal code was read: library.municode.com returns a 2,684-byte Angular shell under a full browser Accept header set, casperwy.gov returns 403, and cheyennecity.org returns a 25,253-byte body for a wrong path as well as a right one. No Wyoming case law was read, and the DCI's administrative rules under W.S. 7-19-105(a) were not read.

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.