Louisiana Background Check Laws: Fair Chance Rules and Penalties

Louisiana’s background check laws combine a state Fair Chance hiring statute, industry-specific fingerprint requirements, and consumer reporting rules with the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act. What applies to you depends on whether you are hiring, being screened, or pulling your own record, and the rules for private employers with 20 or more employees are meaningfully stricter than those for smaller shops.

Fair Chance Rules for Private Employers

Louisiana’s Fair Chance law took effect August 1, 2021 and covers every private employer with 20 or more employees, counting full-time and part-time staff together. Under Louisiana Revised Statutes 23:291.2, these employers cannot ask about or consider any arrest, charge, or criminal accusation that did not result in a conviction. That prohibition runs through the entire hiring process: the application form, the interview, and any review of a background check report.¹

Convictions can be considered, but not through blanket rejection policies. The statute requires an individualized assessment weighing three factors: the nature and seriousness of the offense, the time that has passed since the conviction, and the specific duties of the job. A decade-old theft conviction may be relevant to a finance role and largely irrelevant to a warehouse position with no cash handling.¹

If an applicant asks in writing, the employer must share any background check information used in the hiring decision. Employers with fewer than 20 employees fall outside this statute, though they still owe federal FCRA compliance when they use a third-party screening company.

Industries With Mandatory Screening

Some Louisiana sectors go beyond ordinary employment checks and require fingerprint-based searches through the Louisiana Bureau of Criminal Identification and Information (BCII), with a simultaneous FBI request for out-of-state records.

Childcare and Child Welfare

Anyone whose duties involve investigating child abuse or neglect, supervising or disciplining children, providing direct care, or conducting licensing surveys for the Department of Children and Family Services must submit fingerprints before being hired. A match against any crime listed in RS 15:587.1(C) disqualifies the applicant, and the same requirement extends to volunteers.²

DCFS also searches the state central registry of justified abuse or neglect reports. A person whose name is on the registry cannot be hired while it remains there, though an administrative appeal is available.² Foster placements follow the same logic: no child can be newly placed in a home until every adult living there has cleared the criminal history check.

Healthcare and Government

The Louisiana Department of Health requires criminal history checks for employees, contractors, and subcontractors with access to federal tax information or criminal history record information. Those checks run through BCII and add local criminal history searches in every jurisdiction where the person has lived, worked, or attended school in the past five years. Fingerprinting for prospective hires happens only after a conditional offer, and current employees and contractors are re-screened at least once every 10 years.

Gaming

Employees at licensed gaming facilities, qualified truck stop locations, and pari-mutuel wagering facilities must clear a conviction record check before hire. RS 27:310 disqualifies applicants convicted within the prior ten years of any offense punishable by more than one year in prison, any crime involving theft or false statements, or any gambling offense.³

How to Request a Background Check

Employer-Initiated Checks

Employers using a third-party screening company fall under the federal FCRA. Before ordering the report, the employer must give the applicant a standalone written disclosure that a background check will be obtained and collect the applicant’s written authorization.⁴ Employment screening is one of the FCRA’s permissible purposes for a consumer report, but only with the applicant’s consent.⁵

Employers can also request conviction records directly from BCII with a signed applicant consent form. BCII charges a $26 processing fee, a $10 fingerprinting fee when prints are required, and a $5 technology fee on all background check requests.⁶⁷

Requesting Your Own Record

You can pull your own criminal history through the Louisiana Applicant Processing System (LAPS), which offers fingerprinting locations statewide. After booking an appointment, submitting fingerprints, and paying the fee, you receive the report either by mail with a State Police stamp, signature, and raised seal, or through a secure email link that allows one-time access within 30 days. If you cannot appear in person, you can mail fingerprint cards directly to BCII.⁷

Processing Times

Name-based checks through Louisiana State Police come back faster. Any request involving fingerprints is processed manually and generally takes 15 to 21 business days.⁸ For positions requiring FBI checks under RS 15:587.1, BCII submits fingerprints to the FBI at the same time as the state search, though the federal response adds time.⁹

Adverse Action Before Rejecting an Applicant

If an employer decides not to hire someone based in whole or in part on a background report from a consumer reporting agency, the FCRA requires a two-step adverse action process. This is where employers get sued.

Before the decision becomes final, the employer must send a pre-adverse action notice that includes a copy of the report and a written summary of the applicant’s FCRA rights.⁵ The point is to let the applicant flag errors before rejection is locked in. The FCRA sets no exact waiting period, but five business days is the commonly recommended minimum.

After the wait, if the employer still plans to reject, a final adverse action notice must go out. It must name the consumer reporting agency that produced the report and its contact information, state that the agency did not make the hiring decision, and inform the applicant of the right to obtain a free copy of the report and dispute any inaccuracies within 60 days.¹⁰

Skipping either notice is one of the most common FCRA violations. Emailing a rejection without first sending the pre-adverse action notice exposes the employer to a lawsuit even when the report was accurate and the rejection was defensible.

Expungement and What Still Gets Reported

Louisiana allows expungement of certain arrest and conviction records under the Code of Criminal Procedure. Expungement removes the record from public access but does not destroy it; law enforcement and criminal justice agencies keep access, and everyone else is barred from the record.

Once a court issues an expungement order, private companies that compile and sell criminal history data must stop distributing the expunged information after receiving notice, which the person must serve by sending a certified copy of the order by certified or registered mail. A company that keeps distributing expunged records after proper notice can be held liable for actual damages, court costs, and attorney fees.¹¹

There is a carve-out that surprises people. The state prohibition on disseminating expunged records does not apply to entities regulated by the Fair Credit Reporting Act or the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. In practice, the major consumer reporting agencies used for employment screening operate under federal reporting restrictions instead of this state ban. Under the FCRA, most adverse criminal history older than seven years cannot be reported, but convictions have no federal time limit.¹¹

Housing Applications

Louisiana has no state statute specifically governing how landlords use criminal history in tenant screening. Landlords remain bound by the federal Fair Housing Act, which prohibits housing discrimination based on race, color, religion, national origin, sex, disability, and familial status. Criminal history is not a protected class, but screening policies that rely on criminal records can violate the Act if they disproportionately affect protected groups without serving a legitimate, nondiscriminatory interest. HUD’s 2016 guidance treats rejections based on arrests that never led to convictions as almost always indefensible, and blanket bans on anyone with a conviction as failing because they ignore the offense, its age, and any rehabilitation.

Disputing Errors in Your Report

If a background check contains inaccurate information, you have dispute rights under both federal and Louisiana law. When an employer takes adverse action based on a consumer report, the adverse action notice must tell you about your right to a free copy of the report and your right to dispute inaccuracies with the reporting agency.¹⁰

Louisiana’s credit reporting statute adds a second layer. When you notify a credit reporting agency in writing that you dispute the accuracy of information in your file, the agency must investigate and either correct the item or provide a written update within 45 calendar days. If the investigation does not resolve things, you can file a brief statement of your side that the agency must include in future reports.¹²

If an inaccuracy causes you to be denied employment, credit, or insurance, Louisiana law lets you recover actual damages, attorney fees, and court costs from the agency, provided the error was a significant cause of the denial and the agency failed to use ordinary care in compiling the information.¹²

Penalties for Getting It Wrong

Federal and state consequences stack. A person who willfully violates any FCRA requirement is liable for the greater of actual damages or statutory damages between $100 and $1,000 per violation, plus punitive damages at the court’s discretion, plus attorney fees and court costs.¹³ Willfulness does not require intent to harm; courts have found it where an employer knew the requirements and chose an unreasonably favorable interpretation. For negligent violations, exposure is actual damages, attorney fees, and court costs.¹⁴

FCRA class actions are common because the same procedural mistake, such as extra language on a disclosure form, affects every applicant who signed it. One flawed form can generate thousands of individual claims.

On the state side, hiring someone in childcare or child welfare who has not cleared the required fingerprint check violates RS 46:51.2. Employees whose names appear on the central registry of justified abuse or neglect must be terminated, and noncompliance can jeopardize an organization’s license.² Under Louisiana’s credit reporting statute, anyone damaged by an intentional or negligent violation of the state’s reporting requirements can recover actual damages, attorney fees, and court costs.¹²

1
Justia Law. Louisiana Revised Statutes 23:291.2 – Criminal History; Hiring Decisions
2
Justia Law. Louisiana Revised Statutes 46:51.2 – Criminal History and Central Registry Information
3
Justia Law. Louisiana Revised Statutes 27:310 – Suitability Requirements
4
Federal Trade Commission. Background Checks on Prospective Employees: Keep Required Disclosures Simple
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681b – Permissible Purposes of Consumer Reports
6
Justia Law. Louisiana Revised Statutes 15:587 – Duty to Provide Information
7
Louisiana State Police. BCII
8
Louisiana State Police. LSP Internet Background Checks Frequently Asked Questions
9
Justia Law. Louisiana Revised Statutes 15:587.1 – Provision of Information
10
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681m – Requirements on Users of Consumer Reports
11
Justia Law. Louisiana Code of Criminal Procedure Article 974 – Dissemination of Expunged Records by Third Parties; Court Order
12
Justia Law. Louisiana Revised Statutes 9:3571.1 – Credit Reporting Agency
13
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681n – Civil Liability for Willful Noncompliance
14
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681o – Civil Liability for Negligent Noncompliance