Sponsors (11)
The bill gives compact-member States structured access to FBI criminal-history records while protecting applicants' raw biometric and detailed CHRI from broad interstate sharing, trading improved privacy controls for reduced transparency and contextual information in multistate licensing decisions plus some implementation costs.
State licensing authorities in compact-member States can obtain FBI criminal-history records to perform background checks for licensing and multistate privileges, giving states direct access to centralized CHRI for licensure decisions.
Licensing boards can provide interstate compact commissions a clear binary satisfactory/unsatisfactory outcome without disclosing sensitive CHRI, reducing unnecessary sharing of detailed criminal-history data.
License applicants and state identification bureaus are protected because non-incident identification data (e.g., fingerprints that show no criminal-justice involvement) are excluded from CHRI, lowering the risk that innocuous biometric records are treated as criminal records.
License applicants may have detailed criminal-history information withheld from interstate commissions and possibly from other states, reducing transparency into the records used in licensing decisions.
Compact commissions receive only binary satisfactory/unsatisfactory results, which can obscure timing, severity, and disposition details that are important for evaluating fitness for multistate privileges and may lead to less informed cross-state licensing decisions.
FBI and State agencies must implement new agreements and procedures to route CHRI for licensing checks, creating administrative and compliance costs for state and federal entities.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Requires the FBI to give criminal history record information (CHRI) to a State licensing authority when an interstate licensing compact or its rules require a background check, provided the transfer is done under an agreement with a State law enforcement agency or State identification bureau. Limits how CHRI obtained for licensing checks may be shared: compact-member licensing authorities may not share that CHRI (or parts of it) with the interstate compact commission, other State entities or licensing authorities, or the public, but may tell a commission only that a check was completed and provide a binary satisfactory/unsatisfactory result.
Introduced March 25, 2025 by Peter Welch · Last progress March 25, 2025