Ban-the-Box Laws by State: A 2026 Employer Reference

Ban-the-box is the most fragmented body of employment law in the country. The federal Fair Chance Act covers federal contractors only; everything else is a state, city, or county overlay. The right question is not whether ban-the-box applies to your hiring — it almost certainly does — but when in your workflow the criminal-history inquiry is permitted.

The four common triggers

• Conditional offer trigger (strictest): no inquiry until after a written conditional offer of employment. California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Vermont, Washington, NYC, Philadelphia.
• Interview-selected trigger: no inquiry until the candidate is selected for an interview. Illinois, Oregon.
• Initial-application trigger: no question on the application itself, but inquiry permitted after application receipt. Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin.
• Public-sector only: only public employers covered. Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Mississippi, Montana, North Carolina, South Carolina, South Dakota, West Virginia, Wyoming.

Layered city ordinances

• Austin, Atlanta, Baltimore, Buffalo, Chicago, Columbia (MO), DC, Detroit, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Memphis, Newark, Portland, Providence, Rochester, San Francisco, Seattle, Spokane, St. Louis, Syracuse.
• Where a city ordinance is stricter than the state law, the city ordinance controls for hires in that city.

The unified workflow

Building separate workflows for each jurisdiction does not scale. The defensible approach is to build to the strictest standard (conditional-offer trigger plus written individualized assessment) and apply it to every requisition, regardless of location. That single workflow satisfies all 37 state laws and 150+ city ordinances simultaneously, and it produces a uniform audit trail.

Where SafestHires fits

Every SafestHires hiring workflow defaults to the conditional-offer trigger with full individualized assessment regardless of jurisdiction. Recruiters cannot order criminal-history components until the conditional offer is logged. The result: no requisition that violates the worst-case ban-the-box rule, and a single audit posture across all locations.