Sponsors (11)
The bill centralizes and streamlines interstate criminal-history checks for multistate licensing while limiting disclosure of detailed records to protect privacy, but it risks delaying or blocking licenses, reduces transparency for appeals, and creates compliance costs for states.
Professionals seeking multistate licenses and state licensing authorities: State licensing authorities can obtain interstate FBI criminal-history checks to verify applicants, enabling more consistent and potentially faster licensure decisions across States.
Applicants: The bill prohibits Member State licensing authorities from sharing detailed criminal-history records with compact commissions, other States, or the public, reducing the exposure of sensitive arrest and disposition data.
Compact commissions and state authorities: Compact commissions will receive only a binary completed/satisfactory-or-not result from background checks, allowing compact administrative functions to proceed without access to raw FBI records and lowering the risk of improper disclosure.
Applicants seeking multistate licenses: Federal criminal-history queries can surface arrests or dispositions that may delay or block licensure across States, restricting employment mobility for affected professionals.
Applicants' due-process and transparency: Limiting sharing to a binary result reduces applicants' access to the detailed FBI records used in decisions, making it harder to understand, contest, or appeal denials.
State agencies and governments: Implementing agreements with law enforcement bureaus and enforcing the nondisclosure rules will create administrative and compliance costs for state licensing authorities.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Requires the FBI to send criminal-history records to state licensing authorities for interstate-compact background checks and bars states from re-sharing the records beyond a pass/fail notice.
Requires the FBI Director to provide criminal history record information to state licensing authorities (through a state law enforcement agency or state identification bureau) when that information is needed to meet an interstate compact’s background-check requirement for professional licensure or compact-issued privileges. States that receive the records may not share the underlying criminal history with the compact commission, other states, other licensing authorities, or the public, but may notify the commission that a check was completed and report a binary satisfactory/unsatisfactory result.
Introduced March 25, 2025 by Peter Welch · Last progress March 25, 2025