Tenant screening · FloridaDenied an apartment over a screening report error? The company that wrote it has to follow federal law.

Last reviewed October 8, 2026 by Jackson McMillan, Florida attorney

Short answer: Possibly, yes. A tenant screening company is a consumer reporting agency under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. It must use reasonable procedures to get your report right and must reinvestigate when you dispute. If it put a stranger's eviction or record on you, or kept a wrong record after you disputed it, the law may give you a claim for your losses, statutory damages, and attorney's fees.

Why does a tenant screening report say I was evicted when I wasn't?

Most often because the record belongs to someone else. Screening reports are assembled from court files, and most court files carry no Social Security number. So the screening company matches records to applicants by name, sometimes with a date of birth, and a loose match pins another person's case on you.

That is only the first way these reports go wrong. The others I see most:

• An eviction filing with no ending. The landlord filed, the case was dismissed, withdrawn, or settled, or you won, and the report shows only the filing. A report that leaves out how the case ended can be inaccurate or misleading even if every word in it is technically true.
• A record a court sealed or expunged. The court closed the case to the public, but the screening company's database never caught up.
• One case counted twice or three times. Each hearing or amended filing shows up as a separate eviction.
• A dollar figure that was never a judgment. The amount the landlord asked for gets labeled as money a court ordered you to pay.
• Records too old to report. Evictions and arrests that should have aged off years ago.
• Someone else's credit accounts. Many screening reports include a credit section pulled from a nationwide bureau, and a mixed file there follows you into the rental application. See mixed credit files.

None of these is a small problem in Florida's rental market. One wrong line can be the only thing a leasing office sees, and the next complex pulls the same report.

Is a tenant screening company a credit bureau?

Under federal law, it is treated like one. A company that sells rental history, eviction records, or criminal background information to landlords is a "consumer reporting agency," the same legal category as Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. It owes you the same core duties: reasonable procedures for accuracy, a free file disclosure, and a real reinvestigation when you dispute.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) is the federal law that governs credit reports and the companies that compile them. A tenant screening report is a "consumer report" under that law (15 U.S.C. § 1681a(d)), and the company that assembles it is a consumer reporting agency (§ 1681a(f)). Two duties matter most after a denial:

• Accuracy procedures. The company must follow reasonable procedures to assure the maximum possible accuracy of the information about you (§ 1681e(b)). Matching court records by last name alone, or by name and birth date with nothing else, is where this duty is tested.
• Reinvestigation. When you dispute, the company must reinvestigate for free, generally within 30 days, forward your dispute and your documents to the source of the record within 5 business days, and delete or correct anything inaccurate, incomplete, or unverifiable (§ 1681i(a)). It can add up to 15 days only if you send more relevant information during the first 30. Written results are due within 5 business days after it finishes, and on request it must describe how it reinvestigated within 15 days.

Companies that compile tenant history files on a nationwide basis are also "nationwide specialty consumer reporting agencies" (§ 1681a(x)). Those companies must give you a free copy of your file once every 12 months on request and must keep a toll-free telephone number for those requests (§ 1681j(a)(1)(A), (C)). The file is due within 15 days of your request (§ 1681j(a)(2)). You can also ask any screening company for everything in your file at any time (§ 1681g).

One practical note. Some screening company websites ask you to accept terms before showing you your file, and those terms can include an arbitration clause that courts have sometimes enforced. Requesting by phone or by mail avoids that question.

What does the landlord's denial notice have to tell me?

The notice has to name the screening company, give its address and phone number, say that the company did not make the decision and cannot explain it, and tell you that you can get a free copy of the report within 60 days and dispute anything wrong. Treat it as a map to the report, not as a lawsuit of its own.

Turning down a rental application based even partly on a consumer report is an "adverse action" under the FCRA (§ 1681a(k)(1)(B)(iv)). So is demanding a higher deposit because of the report. The landlord or property manager must then send an adverse action notice (§ 1681m(a)) that includes the items above and, if a credit score was used, the score. Your right to the free copy comes from a separate section (§ 1681j(b)), and the 60 days run from the notice.

Here is the limit you should know before anyone tells you otherwise. Most courts, including a federal court in Florida, have held that a consumer cannot sue over a missing or defective adverse action notice (§ 1681m(h)(8)). If the complex never sent one, that is a reason to ask for the screening company's name in writing, not the basis of a case. The claims that hold up run against the screening company, for an inaccurate report or a careless reinvestigation.

If you got no notice and the leasing office won't say which company it used, ask in writing, keep the answer, and tell me. Many property managers use one of a handful of national screening companies, and the report can usually be tracked down.

How long can an eviction or arrest stay on a screening report?

Generally seven years. An eviction case is a civil suit, and the FCRA bars reporting civil suits, civil judgments, and arrest records once they are more than seven years old, measured from the filing or entry date, or past the statute of limitations if that is longer. Criminal convictions have no federal time limit. Bankruptcies can be reported for ten years.

The time limits are in 15 U.S.C. § 1681c. For a civil case, the seven years generally start on the filing date. For a judgment, they start when the judgment was entered, though an unpaid judgment may be reportable longer while it remains enforceable under state law. Dismissed charges and acquittals fall under the law's catchall for any other adverse item, which also runs seven years. Convictions are the exception to that catchall.

These limits don't apply to a few high-dollar situations: a credit transaction of $150,000 or more, life insurance underwriting of $150,000 or more, or a job expected to pay $75,000 a year or more (§ 1681c(b)). An ordinary apartment application is none of those, so an eviction from 2017 showing up on a 2026 report is worth a hard look.

Why did my dispute come back with the record still on it?

Usually because the company re-ran the same loose match that caused the error. It checked that a person with your name was named in the case and called the record "verified." A reasonable reinvestigation asks a different question: is this record about you, and does it say what the court file says now?

Other reasons a dispute fails:

• The court file was never rechecked. Dispositions change. A dismissal entered after the company first copied the case does not reach your report unless someone goes back to the court.
• The dispute went to the wrong company. If the wrong item is in the credit section of the report, it came from a nationwide bureau, and some screening companies forward those disputes to the bureau that supplied the data. Disputing with that bureau directly is what triggers the reporting company's legal duty to investigate, so send it there too.
• The dispute was a check box. Online forms rarely let you explain that the case number on the report belongs to a different person born in a different year. A letter with the court record attached does.
• You were asked for proof you didn't have. You do not need a police report to dispute a screening error, and you do not need to have been denied first. You can dispute at any time.

Keep one thing in mind as you read your results letter. The FCRA is not a strict liability law. A wrong record by itself is not a violation. The question in court is whether the company's procedures were reasonable, or whether its reinvestigation was. A documented dispute that still comes back "verified" is what makes that question answerable.

What do Florida courts say about screening report errors?

Florida is in the Eleventh Circuit, and that court has upheld a jury's finding that a screening company acted willfully when its name and birth date matching put another Floridian's criminal records on an applicant's report. Florida courts also require a real injury before you can sue, and a report sent to a landlord that cost you a home is the kind of injury they accept.

Standing is the first fight in many of these cases. The Supreme Court held in TransUnion v. Ramirez (2021) that a consumer needs a concrete harm, not just a rule violation. Sending an inaccurate report to a third party, like a leasing office, is the classic concrete harm. An error that sat in a database and was never sent to anyone usually is not enough by itself. Florida state court is not a way around that rule: a Florida appeals court held in 2023 that state courts also require an injury in fact for an FCRA claim.

The adverse action notice point above also comes from a Florida federal court, which held in 2006 that there is no private lawsuit for a defective notice. And the Eleventh Circuit's 2020 decision on a wrong-person criminal record is the reason I ask every renter for a copy of their ID: the match in that case was name plus date of birth, and the report was still about someone else.

I work from one office, in Tampa, and represent renters anywhere in Florida. The case review happens by phone or online, and the documents in these cases are the report, the notice, and the court file, all of which travel by email.

What is a tenant screening error case worth?

The FCRA allows your actual losses plus attorney's fees and costs when a screening company was negligent, and either your actual losses or $100 to $1,000 in statutory damages, plus punitive damages, fees, and costs when it acted willfully. For a renter, actual losses can include the apartment you lost, application fees, higher rent somewhere else, moving and storage costs, and the stress of being treated as a bad tenant.

Negligent violations are covered by 15 U.S.C. § 1681o and willful ones by § 1681n. Willful includes reckless disregard of the law, not only a deliberate choice to break it, and each failure to comply is a separate violation. Courts read "actual damages" broadly: a lost housing opportunity, out-of-pocket costs, time spent fixing the problem, and emotional distress such as humiliation can all count when you can show the violation caused them. In a dispute-handling claim, the losses that count are the ones that came after the failed reinvestigation, so keep every denial dated after your results letter.

Fee shifting is what makes a case over an apartment realistic. If you win, the statute puts your reasonable attorney's fees and costs on the company. You don't pay me unless you win. I take these cases on contingency: no attorney's fees and no case costs owed to me unless you recover money. If a case is lost, a court can sometimes order the losing side to pay the other side's court costs, and some Florida laws, including the security deposit and deceptive practices statutes, also let the winner recover attorney's fees from the loser. I explain that risk before anything is filed, and every term is in a written agreement before you sign. The same statute allows fees against a consumer who files papers in bad faith, which is one reason I read the whole dispute file before recommending suit.

What deadlines matter after a rental denial?

Sixty days to request the free report named in the denial notice. Two years from when you discover the violation to sue, and never more than five years from when it happened. The screening company's own clocks, 30 days to reinvestigate and 5 business days to send results, are the ones that build your record.

1. Within 60 days of the notice

   Ask the screening company for your free report. After the 60 days, you still have the free yearly file from a nationwide company and the right to your file disclosure, but the denial-based request is the simplest.

2. 30 days after the company receives your dispute

   Reinvestigation due, with up to 15 more days only if you added relevant proof during the first 30. Results in writing within 5 business days after that (§ 1681i(a)).

3. 15 days after you ask

   The company must describe how it reinvestigated and give you the name and address of each source it contacted (§ 1681i(a)(7)).

4. 2 years from discovery, 5 years from the violation

   The deadline to sue (§ 1681p). For a mishandled dispute, the clock usually starts when the reinvestigation failed, and a new, documented dispute may start a new one. Don't count on that; act within two years of the failed dispute.

What should I do today?

• Keep the denial. The adverse action notice, the email or letter from the leasing office, and the date you applied. If the notice is missing, ask the property manager in writing which screening company it used.
• Request the full report from the company the notice names, by phone or mail if you can, within 60 days. Ask for everything in your file, not just the report the landlord saw.
• Pull the court record for each case on the report that isn't yours or is reported wrong: the docket showing the dismissal, the judgment amount, or the name and birth date of the real defendant. A certified copy of any sealing order helps.
• Gather identity proof. Your ID with your full name and date of birth, and your addresses for the years in question.
• Dispute in writing, by certified mail, with the screening company, and with the nationwide bureau for anything wrong in the credit section. Keep copies and the receipt. My dispute guide and sample letter work for screening companies too.
• Save what the error cost you: application fees, the lease you signed somewhere else at a higher rent, storage and hotel receipts.
• Send it to me. Request a free case review and attach the denial notice, the screening report, the court records, and your dispute. I'll tell you whether the company met the law and what the case may be worth.

Sources: Fair Credit Reporting Act, 15 U.S.C. §§ 1681a(d), 1681a(f), 1681a(k)(1)(B)(iv), 1681a(x), 1681c(a) and (b), 1681e(b), 1681g, 1681i(a), 1681j(a)(1)(A) and (C), 1681j(a)(2), 1681j(b), 1681m(a), 1681m(h)(8), 1681n, 1681o, 1681p; TransUnion LLC v. Ramirez, 594 U.S. 413 (2021); Williams v. First Advantage LNS Screening Solutions, Inc., 947 F.3d 735 (11th Cir. 2020); Saleh v. Miami Gardens Square One, Inc., 353 So. 3d 1253 (Fla. 3d DCA 2023); Soroka v. Homeowners Loan Corp. (M.D. Fla. June 12, 2006); Safeco Insurance Co. of America v. Burr, 551 U.S. 47 (2007); CFPB, Interpretive Rules, Policy Statements, and Advisory Opinions; Withdrawal, 90 Fed. Reg. 20084 (May 12, 2025). Last reviewed October 8, 2026.