What this answers
On this page
Checkr is a background screening company whose reports are used by employers and by the platforms people drive and deliver for. That makes it a consumer reporting agency under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, with the same obligations as Equifax, Experian or TransUnion.
Which matters more than it sounds. If a Checkr report cost you work, you are not asking a vendor for a favour. You are invoking a federal statute against a company that owes you accuracy, a reinvestigation on a deadline, and a copy of your own file.
What the Status on Your Report Means
The words that appear on a Checkr report are the company's own workflow labels, not legal terms, and reading them as verdicts causes a lot of unnecessary panic.
A report that is pending or in progress means the search has not finished. Court records are pulled county by county and some clerks are slow, so a delay on its own is not a finding against you.
A status indicating the report needs review, often shown as consider, means the results contain something the employer's own rules told the system to flag. It is not a decision and it is not a failure. The decision belongs to the employer, and the FCRA requires the employer to give you a copy of the report and a description of your rights before acting on it.
A clear or complete status means the search finished without anything the employer's rules flagged.
Treat all of these as information about where the file sits, not as a judgment that has already been made.
The Two Things That Go Wrong
Almost every genuine Checkr dispute is one of two problems, and they call for different evidence.
The record is not yours. Screening companies search court records by name, and most courts publish little beyond a name and sometimes a year of birth. A common name, or a name close to someone else's, pulls records belonging to a stranger. This is a matching failure, and the proof is the certified court record showing the other person's full identifiers next to yours.
The record is yours but reported wrong. A charge that was dismissed is shown without its disposition. A felony pled down to a misdemeanour is reported as originally charged. An expunged case still appears because the expungement never reached the database the search pulled from.
That second category has a provision written for it. Under 15 U.S.C. § 1681k(a), an agency furnishing public record information for employment purposes must either notify you when it reports that information or maintain strict procedures to keep it complete and up to date, and the statute defines up to date for arrests, indictments and convictions as reporting the current public record status. A charge reported without its outcome is the exact failure that language describes.
What Can Legitimately Be Reported
Two rules decide whether an item belongs on the report at all, and they differ in a way that catches people out.
Convictions have no federal time limit. Section 1681c(a)(5) excludes records of convictions of crimes from the seven year cutoff, so a conviction can be reported indefinitely unless state law says otherwise, and several states do impose their own limits.
Non convictions do have a limit. Arrests and other adverse items that did not end in conviction fall under the seven year rule, and § 1681c(a)(2) gives records of arrest seven years or until the governing statute of limitations expires, whichever is longer.
So an old arrest that never became a conviction should not be sitting on an employment report, while an old conviction generally can be. Knowing which one you are looking at tells you whether your dispute is about the age of the item or about its accuracy.
How to Dispute It
Get the report first. You are entitled to your file, and the adverse action notice you received will identify the agency and tell you how to request it. Do not dispute from memory or from what an employer told you over the phone.
Then put the dispute in writing. Checkr, like every screening company, offers an online portal, and a portal is convenient in exactly the way that hurts you later: it leaves you without proof of what you sent or when it arrived. The reinvestigation clock runs from receipt, so send it by certified mail with return receipt requested and keep the green card. Use the portal as well if you like; just do not rely on it alone.
Name the item precisely, say what is wrong, say what the correct information is, and attach the proof. For a record that is not yours, that is the certified disposition showing the other person's identifiers. For a record reported with the wrong outcome, it is the certified disposition showing the real one.
Ask for two things, not one. Remove the item, and correct the identifiers the agency holds for you. If the match happened on a name alone and nothing in your file changes, the next search can match the same way again.
The Deadlines
The reinvestigation must generally be completed within 30 days of the agency receiving your dispute, extending to 45 days if you supply additional relevant information during that period.
Tell the employer or platform in writing that the report is disputed, and keep that letter. Their knowledge matters: continuing to rely on a report they have been told is contested is a different position from acting on one they believed was accurate.
If the result comes back verified and you know the record is still wrong, request a description of the procedure used to verify it, under § 1681i(a)(6) and (a)(7). The agency must provide it within 15 days of your request, and a verification that never engaged with a certified court record is hard to defend as a reasonable investigation under § 1681e(b).
What the Dispute Letter Should Contain
Keep it short and structured. You are not arguing; you are giving the agency something it has to engage with.
Open by identifying yourself and the report: your full legal name, date of birth, current address, and the report or reference number if you have one.
State the item precisely. Name the record as it appears on the report, with the court, the case number, the charge and the date shown.
State what is wrong in one sentence. The record belongs to another person. Or the charge was dismissed on a given date and the report omits the disposition.
State what the correct information is, and point at the enclosure that proves it. Certified disposition from the clerk of court, attached.
Ask for the remedy explicitly: remove the record, and correct the identifiers held for me so this match does not recur.
Close with a request for written confirmation and a corrected copy of the report, then sign and date it. Send certified mail, return receipt requested, and keep a copy of everything you enclosed.
What the Error Cost You
Start recording this on the day it happens, because reconstructing it later is much harder and the proof decays.
Keep the adverse action notice, which names the agency and ties the report to a dated decision. Keep the offer letter or the job posting, the rate of pay, and the start date you were working toward. Note the date the account was deactivated or the offer withdrawn, and what you earned before and after.
Keep every piece of correspondence with dates: your dispute, the certified mail receipt and green card, each response, and the corrected report when it arrives.
None of this is about building a case on day one. It is that the record either exists or it does not, and the people who can show what happened are the ones who wrote it down while it was happening.
Common Questions
Is Checkr covered by the FCRA?
Yes. A company that assembles information about consumers and furnishes reports to employers for hiring decisions is a consumer reporting agency, and it owes accuracy, reinvestigation and file disclosure duties.
What does a consider status mean on a Checkr report?
It means the results contain something the employer's own screening rules flagged for review. It is a workflow label rather than a legal finding, and the hiring decision belongs to the employer.
How long does Checkr have to investigate my dispute?
Generally 30 days from receiving it, extending to 45 days if you provide additional relevant information during that period. The clock runs from receipt, which is why proof of delivery matters.
Checkr reported a criminal record that is not mine. What do I do?
Obtain the certified disposition from the court holding the case, which carries the defendant's full identifiers, and dispute in writing with that document attached. Ask for your identifiers to be corrected as well as for the record to be removed.
My charge was dismissed but the report does not show it. Is that allowed?
Can an employer reject me before I see the report?
Do I have to dispute before anything else can happen?
Disputing is what creates the record, and under the FCRA a furnisher's privately enforceable investigation duty arises only after a dispute is forwarded to it. Dispute first, in writing, and keep everything.