7-Year Background Check States: Salary Exceptions and FCRA Limits

About ten states restrict how far back a consumer reporting agency can go when reporting criminal convictions on an employment background check, and most of them cap the lookback at seven years. The seven-year background check states are California, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, and Washington, along with Hawaii, which uses a seven-year cap for felonies and a five-year cap for misdemeanors. These state laws matter because the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act sets no time limit at all on how old a reported conviction can be.¹

What Each Seven-Year State Actually Restricts

The core protection is the same across these states: older convictions fall off your employment background report. The specifics vary in ways that can decide whether your record shows up or not.

California prohibits reporting convictions older than seven years under its Investigative Consumer Reporting Agencies Act, and applies that limit regardless of the salary of the job. A separate “clean slate” law automatically seals most felonies, misdemeanors, and non-conviction arrest records four years after the person completes their sentence, provided no new charges follow. Sex offenses requiring registration, serious or violent felonies, and positions in K–12 education are excluded from that automatic sealing.
Hawaii limits felony conviction reporting to seven years and misdemeanor reporting to five, the only state with a shorter window for lower-level offenses.
Kansas restricts reporting agencies from including convictions older than seven years.
Maryland bars reporting convictions older than seven years, but the protection lifts for positions paying $20,000 or more per year, one of the lowest salary thresholds among the seven-year states.
Massachusetts limits criminal history reporting through its CORI (Criminal Offender Record Information) system, which restricts how far back records can be disclosed in employment screening.
Montana applies a seven-year limit to arrests, indictments, and convictions alike.
New Hampshire restricts the reporting of older criminal records on consumer reports used for employment decisions.
New Mexico caps the criminal conviction lookback at seven years.
New York imposes a seven-year limit on conviction reporting, with a salary exception that allows unlimited lookback for higher-paying roles.
Washington restricts conviction reporting to seven years and has expanded its Fair Chance Act in recent years to add financial penalties for employers who violate hiring rules.

What About Texas?

Many background check guides still list Texas as a seven-year state. Texas has a consumer reporting statute on the books, but federal FCRA amendments in the late 1990s included preemption language that overrides state-level time limits on conviction reporting in certain circumstances. Whether the Texas seven-year rule still has practical force is a contested legal question. If you’re applying for a job in Texas, don’t assume older convictions will automatically be excluded.

Salary Exceptions That Can Override the Seven-Year Limit

Higher-paying positions often trigger an exception that reopens your full criminal history. Maryland’s threshold is $20,000, which means the seven-year protection there really only covers applicants for the lowest-paying jobs. New York has a similar salary-based exception for higher-earning roles. Not every seven-year state uses a salary trigger — California, for example, applies its cap regardless of what the job pays.

A separate federal salary rule sits on top of the state ones. Under the FCRA, the federal time limits on non-conviction items (seven years for arrests without convictions, civil suits, civil judgments, and paid tax liens; ten years for bankruptcies) all disappear when the job pays $75,000 or more per year.¹ For senior or executive roles, expect a reporting agency to pull records going back well beyond seven years, whichever state you’re in.

What the FCRA Limits at the Federal Level

The seven-year state rules matter because federal law is silent on convictions. Under the FCRA, a criminal conviction has no expiration date on a consumer report. A 20-year-old felony can appear on your background check, and nothing in federal law prevents it.¹ Everything the seven-year states do is layered on top of that federal baseline.

Federal law does cap other categories. Arrests that never led to a conviction, civil lawsuits, civil judgments, and paid tax liens drop off after seven years, measured from the date of entry (or, for tax liens, from the date of payment). Bankruptcy filings can be reported for up to ten years from the filing date, making them the longest-lasting negative item on a standard consumer report.¹

Expunged and Sealed Records Are Off-Limits Everywhere

If a court has expunged, sealed, or otherwise restricted access to a record, a background check company should not be reporting it in any state. A 2024 advisory opinion from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau made this explicit: a reporting agency violates the FCRA’s accuracy requirements if it lacks reasonable procedures to keep expunged or sealed records out of consumer reports.² Roughly 45 states now allow some form of expungement or sealing for certain convictions.

This protection is independent of the seven-year state list. Whether or not your state caps reporting at seven years, a sealed or expunged record shouldn’t appear at all. If it does, you have grounds to dispute it and potentially to sue.

What to Do If an Old Conviction Shows Up Anyway

Errors in background reports are common: convictions that should have aged off under a state’s seven-year rule, records confused with someone else’s, charges that were dismissed but reported as convictions. The fix starts with your own file.

Under the FCRA, you can request your report from any consumer reporting agency at any time. You’ll need to give your full legal name (including former names), Social Security number, date of birth, and a complete address history covering at least the past seven years.³ Most major screening companies accept requests through an online disclosure form; some still require a mailed request with a signature. Pulling your own report before you start applying is far less stressful than finding the problem after an offer falls through.

Filing a Dispute

When you find an error, file a dispute with the reporting agency directly. Online portals are common, but a written dispute sent by certified mail with return receipt gives you a paper trail worth having if the matter turns into a lawsuit. Explain the error and attach supporting documents: a court disposition showing a dismissed charge, a certificate of expungement, or proof that the record isn’t yours.

The agency then has 30 days to investigate by contacting the original source of the data, such as the courthouse.⁴ If you send additional information during that window, the agency gets up to 15 extra days, for 45 total.⁵ Once the investigation is done, the agency must send you written results within five business days and an updated copy of your report reflecting any corrections. If the agency sides with the original data, you can still add a brief statement to your file explaining your side, and that statement rides along with future reports.

When You Can Sue

If a reporting agency includes a conviction beyond your state’s seven-year window, an expunged record, or data that isn’t yours, and the error causes you real harm, the FCRA gives you a way to recover.

For willful violations — where the agency knew the rules and ignored them or acted with reckless disregard — you can recover between $100 and $1,000 in statutory damages per violation without having to prove a specific dollar loss, plus potential punitive damages and attorney’s fees.⁶ For negligent violations, you can recover your actual damages plus attorney’s fees, though you’ll need to show what the mistake actually cost you. The fee-shifting provision is what makes these cases viable; consumer rights attorneys will sometimes take them on contingency.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681c – Requirements Relating to Information Contained in Consumer Reports
2
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Fair Credit Reporting – Background Screening
3
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. 12 CFR 1022.123 – Appropriate Proof of Identity
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681i – Procedure in Case of Disputed Accuracy
5
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. How Long Does It Take to Repair an Error on a Credit Report?
6
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681n – Civil Liability for Willful Noncompliance