Florida Level 2 Background Check: Costs, Disqualifiers, and Renewal

A Florida Level 2 background check is a fingerprint-based screening that runs your prints through both the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the FBI, plus sex offender registries in every state you’ve lived in over the past five years. It’s required under Chapter 435 of the Florida Statutes for anyone working, contracting, or volunteering in a role with access to children, elderly adults, or other vulnerable people. A conviction for any of the dozens of offenses listed in the statute means automatic disqualification from the job, though an exemption process exists for people who can show rehabilitation.

Who Has to Get One

Chapter 435 defines “employee” broadly. It reaches employees, contractors, licensees, and volunteers in what it calls “screened positions.”¹ In practical terms, that includes daycare workers, home health aides, nursing home staff, school employees at public, charter, virtual, and scholarship-program private schools, foster parents, juvenile facility workers, and licensed healthcare professionals. The common thread is contact with “vulnerable persons,” meaning minors and vulnerable adults.

What the Screening Actually Searches

Your fingerprints go first to FDLE for a statewide criminal history check, then on to the FBI for a national search covering offenses anywhere in the country. On top of that, the statute requires a search of sexual predator and sexual offender registries in every state where you’ve lived during the preceding five years.²

Depending on the agency requesting the check, additional databases come into play. Healthcare positions screened through the Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) Clearinghouse may include the Florida Abuse Registry and Medicaid exclusion lists. Because fingerprints are biometric, the search identifies you regardless of what name a record was filed under, which is why Level 2 catches things a name-based Level 1 check often misses.

How the Fingerprinting Works

Before you do anything else, get the Originating Agency Identifier (ORI) number from whichever employer, licensing board, or agency is requiring your screening. The ORI routes your results to the right destination. Send them to the wrong place and you may have to start over.

Then schedule an appointment with a LiveScan vendor approved by FDLE. LiveScan is the electronic method for capturing and transmitting prints, and the statute requires Level 2 fingerprints to be submitted electronically.² Bring valid government-issued photo ID. The vendor captures your prints, enters the ORI and your personal information, and transmits everything to FDLE. You’ll receive a Transaction Control Number (TCN) to track your submission. Results go to the requesting agency, not to you.

What It Costs

Two layers of fees apply: the state and federal processing charges, and the LiveScan vendor’s fee for taking the prints. As of January 2025, FDLE processing fees vary by applicant category:³

DCF, DJJ, Elder Affairs, and Guardian Ad Litem applicants: $8 state plus $12 federal, totaling $20.
Agriculture and Consumer Services: $15 state plus $12 federal, totaling $27.
School employees, realtors, insurance agents, healthcare workers, foster care applicants, and Florida Bar applicants: $24 state plus $12 federal, totaling $36.
VECHS volunteers (qualified entities serving children, elderly, or disabled persons): $18 state plus $10 federal, totaling $28.
Criminal justice applicants such as law enforcement and corrections: no charge.

LiveScan vendors add their own service fee on top, usually somewhere in the $20 to $50 range. Screenings run through the AHCA Clearinghouse total $60 plus the vendor’s fee.⁴ No statute specifies who pays, so whether it’s the employer or the applicant depends on the job.

Crimes That Disqualify You

Section 435.04(2) lists dozens of specific offenses that trigger automatic disqualification. The check looks for arrests awaiting final disposition, guilty findings regardless of adjudication, no-contest pleas, and unsealed juvenile delinquency findings. Convictions under similar laws in other states count too.² The categories include:

Violent crimes such as murder, manslaughter, aggravated assault, aggravated battery, kidnapping, false imprisonment, and vehicular homicide.
Sexual offenses including sexual battery, lewd or lascivious offenses, sexual misconduct with patients or developmentally disabled clients, and sexual performance by a child.
Crimes against children and vulnerable adults, including child abuse, neglect, or abandonment, adult abuse or exploitation of the elderly or disabled, and failure to report child abuse.
Theft and fraud offenses such as felony theft, robbery, carjacking, exploitation of elderly or disabled adults, and felony fraud.
Felony drug offenses, including sale, manufacture, and delivery of controlled substances.
Human trafficking, arson, burglary, felony weapons offenses near schools, resisting an officer with violence, and escape.

Attempting, soliciting, or conspiring to commit any listed offense counts the same as committing it. Two points catch applicants off guard. First, “regardless of adjudication” means a withheld adjudication on a listed offense still disqualifies you. Second, sealed and expunged records. Florida generally treats them as though they don’t exist, but Level 2 is a specific exception written into the statute, which checks for offenses even where the record has not been sealed or expunged. A sealed or expunged record for a disqualifying offense will still surface here.

If You’re Disqualified

When a screening turns up a disqualifying offense, the employer must notify you in writing and identify the specific record. From that point, the employer cannot allow you contact with any vulnerable person in a role that requires screening. You must be terminated or moved to a position that doesn’t require it, unless you obtain an exemption.⁵

You have two paths. If the record isn’t yours, you can contest the finding on the basis of mistaken identity. That is the only ground for contesting the result itself. If the record is accurate but you believe you’ve moved past it, your route is the exemption process.

Applying for an Exemption

The head of the requesting agency can grant an exemption, but you carry the burden of proof, and the standard is clear and convincing evidence that you shouldn’t be disqualified. Agencies weigh your rehabilitation, the circumstances of the offense, the time that has passed, the harm to any victim, and your history since. Even non-disqualifying arrests or convictions after the incident can be considered.⁶

When you can apply depends on the offense:

Felonies: at least two years must have passed since you completed confinement, supervision, or any nonmonetary condition imposed by the court.
Misdemeanors: you must have completed all court-imposed conditions, with no additional waiting period.
Juvenile findings of delinquency for offenses that would be felonies for an adult, where the record isn’t sealed or expunged: three years since completion of all court-imposed conditions.

Before you’re eligible at all, every court-ordered financial obligation tied to the disqualifying offense must be paid in full. That includes fines, fees, restitution, costs of prosecution, and civil judgments.

How Long Results Take

Once the vendor transmits your prints, FDLE runs the state check immediately and forwards the prints to the FBI. Clear prints often produce results within a few business days. Smudged or unreadable prints require resubmission, which adds time and may cost an additional $12 through the Clearinghouse.⁴ While you wait, an employer can bring you on for training and orientation, but you cannot have direct contact with vulnerable persons until the screening clears.⁵

The Clearinghouse and Five-Year Renewal

The Care Provider Background Screening Clearinghouse, operated by AHCA with FDLE, lets participating agencies share results. If one specified agency has already screened you, a new employer covered by another specified agency can pull your existing results through the Clearinghouse instead of ordering a fresh screening.⁷

FDLE keeps your prints on file and runs them against new arrest submissions on an ongoing basis, so a later arrest gets flagged automatically. That retention lasts five years. The FBI national check also has to be resubmitted every five years. Miss the renewal date and your prints are purged; there is no grace period, and you’ll go through full fingerprinting again. Renewal through the Clearinghouse costs $42, well below the cost of an initial screening. A break in employment of more than 90 days from a screened position triggers a new national screening when you return.⁴

Checking Your Record Before You Apply

Because mistaken identity is the only ground for contesting a Level 2 result, catching errors before they cost you a job matters. To correct inaccurate information in the underlying criminal history record, FDLE directs individuals to its Criminal History Record Maintenance Section.⁸ Requesting your own copy of your FDLE criminal history before you apply for a screened position lets you find and resolve any errors on your own timeline instead of racing against a start date.

1
Online Sunshine. Florida Statutes Chapter 435 – Employment Screening – Section: 435.02 Definitions
2
Online Sunshine. Florida Statutes 435.04 – Level 2 Screening Standards
3
Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Criminal History Record Check Fee Schedule
4
Florida Agency for Health Care Administration. Background Screening
5
Florida Senate. Florida Statutes 435.06 – Exclusion From Employment
6
Florida Senate. Florida Statutes 435.07 – Exemptions From Disqualification
7
Online Sunshine. Florida Statutes Chapter 435 – Employment Screening – Section: 435.12 Care Provider Background Screening Clearinghouse
8
Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Obtaining or Challenging a Criminal History Record