Is it legal to run a background check on a contractor?

Public records are public — that is the legal premise the entire contractor verification industry runs on. A contractor offering services to the public has implicitly consented to public scrutiny of their business records. The state issues the license, the state publishes the license. The state registers the LLC, the state publishes the registration. OSHA cites the company, OSHA publishes the citation. None of these require the contractor's consent to access.

What requires consent (FCRA-regulated): consumer credit reports, consumer criminal history checks, employment background checks. The Fair Credit Reporting Act applies when a "consumer reporting agency" assembles personal information about an individual for credit, insurance, employment, or housing purposes. The contractor is acting as a BUSINESS, and the records being checked are BUSINESS records — neither triggers FCRA.

What is not allowed even on contractors: accessing non-public records (sealed court filings, unpublished tax returns, private bank records), using subterfuge to obtain records you would not otherwise have access to, accessing personal records of the contractor's family or employees, or aggregating personal data (SSN, DOB, home address) without consent and a permissible purpose.

What Groundcheck does specifically: pulls only public records, only about business entities, only from official government sources or BBB. No FCRA-regulated data. No consumer-credit pulls. No personal criminal history. No notice required, no consent required.

State variations: a few states have additional restrictions on commercial data brokers, but contractor licensing data is explicitly public in all 51 jurisdictions. California's CCPA and Virginia's VCDPA apply to consumer data, not to publishing public business records. The EU's GDPR applies to EU data subjects, and even there, "professional capacity" records have a narrower protection than personal data.

Where confusion arises: storm-chaser and door-to-door scams often invoke "you can't check on me" to discourage homeowners. They are lying. Public records are public. You have the same right to check a contractor as you have to check a restaurant's health inspection score or a doctor's medical license.

For homeowners running Groundcheck: you have no obligation to tell the contractor you ran the check, no obligation to share the results, and no adverse-action notice requirement when you decide not to hire based on the results. This is fundamentally different from a tenant or employee screening.

For commercial users (procurement, real estate, lending): same public-records premise applies. FCRA does not regulate B2B due diligence.