How to Legally Run a Background Check on Someone

You can legally run a background check on someone in the United States if you have a lawful reason for the check, get the person’s written permission when the law requires it, use the results only for that stated purpose, and follow the extra notice steps that apply if you’re going to act against them based on what you find. The rules tighten sharply the moment you hire a third-party screening company, and they tighten again if the check is for employment. Below is what the law actually asks of you, in the order the decisions come up.

Start With a Permissible Purpose

Before anything else, ask why you’re running the check. The Fair Credit Reporting Act governs any report compiled by a consumer reporting agency (CRA), which means any third-party company that puts together background information for you.¹ The FCRA lets you request that report only if you have a “permissible purpose” listed in the statute: evaluating someone for credit, employment, insurance underwriting, tenant screening, or a business transaction the consumer initiated.²

Curiosity about a neighbor, a date, or an ex does not qualify. Ordering a CRA report without a permissible purpose is a federal violation, and the subject of the report can sue you.

A boundary worth noting: if you’re only searching public records yourself, without going through a CRA, the FCRA’s consent and disclosure rules don’t apply to you directly. The permissible purpose rule and the employer-specific rules below are triggered by hiring a screening company, not by opening a court website.

What You Need From the Person

Accurate results depend on accurate inputs. Start with a full legal name, including middle names and any known aliases. But a name alone is not enough. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has said that matching records using only a first and last name violates the FCRA’s accuracy requirements, because too many people share names.³

Date of birth is the standard second identifier. A Social Security number makes the check much more thorough, because it lets the CRA trace address history across states and pick up aliases. You can ask for an SSN, but the person isn’t always required to provide one.⁴ If they refuse, the check can still run on other identifiers, just less completely.

You’ll also need written consent from the person for most checks that touch protected records — anything pulling credit, employment history, or education records, and any employment-purpose report. Consent is separate from disclosure; both have to happen, in that order, before the check is ordered.

Two Ways to Run the Check

Searching Public Records Yourself

Anyone can look at publicly available records without triggering the FCRA. Criminal records are often searchable through state court websites or county clerk portals. Civil filings, judgments, and bankruptcies can be pulled through local court systems or the federal PACER database. Driving records go through the state DMV for a modest fee that varies by state.

The trade-off is coverage. You’re searching one jurisdiction at a time, so you’ll miss records in places you don’t think to check. Court databases vary in how complete and searchable they are. And there’s no built-in accuracy check confirming you’re looking at the right person.

Hiring a Consumer Reporting Agency

A professional CRA searches multiple databases at once and returns a single compiled report. Prices for employment screening packages run from around $20 for a basic county criminal check to $200 or more for a comprehensive package covering multi-jurisdiction criminal history, employment verification, education confirmation, and credit.

Pick a provider that explicitly states FCRA compliance and walks you through the required disclosures and consent forms. If a service lets you order a report on someone without asking about your permissible purpose, treat that as a warning sign. Reputable CRAs are required to verify your reason before releasing the report.²

One clarification that catches people out: the finished report is not itself a public record. Even though the underlying data comes from public sources, the compiled report is a private document between you and the CRA and can only be shared with someone else who has their own permissible purpose.

Extra Rules if the Check Is for Employment

Employment-purpose reports carry the strictest requirements under the FCRA, and this is where most legal mistakes happen. Class-action lawsuits over improper disclosure forms have produced multi-million-dollar settlements.

Standalone Written Disclosure and Consent

Before ordering a consumer report on an applicant or employee, give the person a clear written disclosure — in a standalone document — stating that you may obtain a background check. Then get their written authorization.² The “standalone document” piece is where employers slip. You cannot bury the disclosure inside a job application or combine it with a liability waiver. A brief explanation of what a consumer report is can go in the same document, but anything that distracts from the disclosure itself creates legal exposure.⁵

The Two-Step Adverse Action Process

If you plan to reject an applicant, fire an employee, or take any other negative action based even in part on a background check, the FCRA requires two separate notices.

The pre-adverse action notice comes first. Before making your final decision, send the person a copy of the consumer report you relied on and a written summary of their FCRA rights.² The point is to give them a chance to spot errors before you act. The statute requires a “reasonable” wait before the final decision. It doesn’t set an exact number of days; five business days is a commonly followed minimum.

The final adverse action notice comes after the wait, if you’re still going through with the decision. It has to include the name, address, and phone number of the CRA that supplied the report, a statement that the CRA did not make the decision and cannot explain it, notice of the person’s right to a free copy of the report within 60 days, and notice of their right to dispute inaccurate information.⁵

Collapsing the two notices into one, or skipping the waiting period, is a common FCRA violation. Courts have been clear that the notices must be separate events with a real opportunity to respond in between.

Local timing rules stack on top of this. More than 35 states and 150-plus cities and counties have “ban-the-box” laws that delay when an employer can ask about criminal history, and the federal Fair Chance to Compete for Jobs Act blocks federal agencies from requesting criminal history before making a conditional offer.⁶ Running the check at the wrong stage can violate these laws even when the check itself is otherwise clean.

What You Can and Can’t See

Background reports pull from several categories of records, and access rules vary.

Criminal records — arrests, convictions, pending charges — are generally public through state and county courts, though the ease of access varies by jurisdiction.
Civil court records like lawsuits, judgments, and bankruptcies are available through local court clerks or PACER.
Driving records are limited by the federal Driver’s Privacy Protection Act, which restricts release of a person’s photo, Social Security number, address, and medical information without either express consent or a permissible use like motor vehicle safety or law enforcement. Driving violations, accident history, and license status sit outside that protected category and are more freely available.⁷⁸
Education and past employment verification require the person’s consent; schools and former employers generally won’t release records otherwise.
Credit reports require a permissible purpose. Many states now restrict employment-related credit checks to specific job categories such as financial-services roles, positions with access to sensitive data, or law enforcement.
Medical and disability information is largely off-limits. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, employers must treat medical information as a confidential record, and screening agencies acting on their behalf are bound by the same restrictions. A medical exam can only be required after a conditional job offer, and the same exam has to apply to everyone in that job category.⁹

How Far Back a Report Can Go

The FCRA caps how old most negative information can be in a consumer report. These caps apply to CRA-generated reports, not to what stays in the public record itself.

Seven-year limit: arrests, civil suits, civil judgments, paid tax liens, collection accounts, and most other negative items drop off after seven years.¹⁰
Ten-year limit: bankruptcies drop off ten years after the date of the order for relief.¹⁰
Criminal convictions: no federal time limit. Convictions are explicitly excluded from the seven-year cap and can be reported indefinitely.¹⁰

Some states go further, capping conviction reporting or banning the reporting of arrests that didn’t lead to convictions. The report you get can look different depending on where the subject lives and where the records originate.

If the Person Disputes What You Find

The subject of a background check has the right to challenge inaccurate information. Once a dispute is filed, the CRA has 30 days to investigate and respond, with a possible 15-day extension if the consumer provides additional information during that period. If the disputed item turns out to be wrong or unverifiable, the CRA has to correct or delete it and notify anyone who recently received a report containing the error.¹¹

If you’re the employer or landlord who ordered the report and a dispute lands during the adverse action waiting period, that’s exactly what the waiting period is for. Wait for the corrected report before making a final call. Acting on information the applicant is actively challenging is how lawsuits get filed.

1
Federal Trade Commission. Fair Credit Reporting Act
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681b – Permissible Purposes of Consumer Reports
3
Federal Register. Fair Credit Reporting – Name-Only Matching Procedures
4
Federal Trade Commission. Employer Background Checks and Your Rights
5
Federal Trade Commission. Using Consumer Reports – What Employers Need to Know
6
HHS Office of Inspector General. The Fair Chance to Compete for Jobs Act
7
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 2721 – Prohibition on Release and Use of Certain Personal Information From State Motor Vehicle Records
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 2725 – Definitions
9
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Enforcement Guidance on Disability-Related Inquiries and Medical Examinations of Employees Under the ADA
10
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681c – Requirements Relating to Information Contained in Consumer Reports
11
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. A Summary of Your Rights Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act