Maryland Fair Chance Housing Act 2026: Criminal Record Rules

Before extending a conditional offer of tenancy, a landlord may not request or require a prospective tenant to disclose whether they have a criminal history.

[Cite: Maryland SB 937, Chapter 752, 2026 Regular Session, enrolled text]

That's the ban-the-box piece most coverage of this law leads with, and it's real, but it isn't the whole rule. It only governs what a landlord can ask. It doesn't mean criminal history is entirely off the table before that point.

A landlord may still reject an applicant before extending any conditional offer if the applicant has a conviction for a sexual offense under the relevant statute, child pornography, first or second degree murder within the past 10 years, human trafficking, an offense requiring lifetime sex-offender registration, or an equivalent conviction from another state or federal court.

[Cite: Maryland SB 937, Chapter 752, 2026 Regular Session, enrolled text]

This is a short, specific list, not a general exception. A landlord relying on it needs to confirm the applicant's conviction actually matches one of these categories exactly, rather than assuming any serious-sounding conviction qualifies.

Only after extending a conditional offer may a landlord conduct a criminal history records check and consider certain convictions as grounds for withdrawing that offer.

[Cite: Maryland SB 937, Chapter 752, 2026 Regular Session, enrolled text]

That check is limited to a 3-year lookback period, a meaningful reduction from the 7-year standard many landlords have used under prior screening practices.

[Cite: Maryland SB 937, Chapter 752, 2026 Regular Session, enrolled text]

Grounds for withdrawing a conditional offer include any felony conviction within 5 years of the application, an offense requiring lifetime sex-offender registration, or, within a 3-year window specifically, sexual offenses, child pornography, kidnapping, arson, first-degree assault, first-degree burglary, manufacturing a controlled substance, or felony fraud.

[Cite: Maryland SB 937, Chapter 752, 2026 Regular Session, enrolled text]

This is a different, broader list than the pre-offer rejection categories, and it uses a different timing structure: a 5-year window for any felony generally, layered with a tighter 3-year window for the specific serious offenses named.

Even when a conviction falls within these post-offer categories, the landlord can't simply withdraw the offer on that basis alone. The law requires an individualized assessment considering the nature and severity of the offense, the applicant's age at the time it occurred, how much time has passed, evidence of rehabilitation and good conduct, how severe the impact would be if the applicant reoffended, and whether the offense occurred on the specific rental property in question.

[Cite: Maryland SB 937, Chapter 752, 2026 Regular Session, enrolled text]

Withdrawal has to be necessary to fulfill a substantial, legitimate, and nondiscriminatory interest, a standard that requires the landlord to document the reasoning, not just the underlying conviction.

[Cite: Maryland SB 937, Chapter 752, 2026 Regular Session, enrolled text]

The statute's provisions work entirely off conviction type and how recently it occurred. It doesn't separately carve out sealed records, expunged records, or juvenile records as their own excluded category the way some other states' fair-chance laws do.

[Cite: Maryland SB 937, Chapter 752, 2026 Regular Session, enrolled text]

A landlord shouldn't assume this Maryland law automatically mirrors screening rules from other states on that specific point. If a record has been sealed or expunged under separate Maryland law, that status is governed by whatever law created the sealing or expungement, not by anything unique to the Fair Chance Housing Act itself.

If a landlord withdraws a conditional offer based on criminal history, the written notice must state the specific reason for the withdrawal, tell the applicant they can request reassessment by submitting evidence of inaccuracies in the record, rehabilitation, or other mitigating factors, and inform the applicant of the right to request a copy of all information the landlord relied on.

[Cite: Maryland SB 937, Chapter 752, 2026 Regular Session, enrolled text]

If an applicant requests that information, the landlord has to provide it within 10 days.

[Cite: Maryland SB 937, Chapter 752, 2026 Regular Session, enrolled text]

Before accepting an application fee, a landlord must give written notice explaining how criminal history will be used in the process, including that an individualized assessment will be conducted and that the applicant can submit evidence of inaccuracies, rehabilitation, or mitigating factors if the conviction history becomes relevant later.

[Cite: Maryland SB 937, Chapter 752, 2026 Regular Session, enrolled text]

That's a disclosure obligation that applies to every applicant, not just ones who end up with a criminal history issue, since it has to happen before the fee is collected.

Separate from the criminal history rules specifically, this law also bars a landlord from requiring drug or alcohol testing, requesting information about substance-abuse treatment programs, advertising that a criminal record disqualifies applicants, or distributing an applicant's criminal history to unrelated third parties.

[Cite: Maryland SB 937, Chapter 752, 2026 Regular Session, enrolled text]

That advertising restriction is worth double-checking against existing listing templates and rental ads, since a boilerplate line about background checks disqualifying certain applicants could run afoul of this provision even if it predates the law.

This law applies to a landlord owning or managing 5 or more residential rental units statewide. Owner-occupied units are exempt regardless of total portfolio size.

[Cite: Maryland SB 937, Chapter 752, 2026 Regular Session, enrolled text]

That 5-unit threshold is worth noting specifically because Maryland's separate rent-reporting mandate, created the same session, uses a 6-unit threshold instead. A landlord managing exactly 5 units is covered by this Fair Chance Housing Act but falls just short of the rent-reporting requirement, a distinction that's easy to blur if these two new Maryland laws get treated as a single package.

The Act preempts and supersedes any local law or ordinance comparable in subject matter.

[Cite: Maryland SB 937, Chapter 752, 2026 Regular Session, enrolled text]

For a landlord operating in a jurisdiction that had its own local criminal-history screening ordinance, that local rule no longer controls once this statewide law takes effect. The statewide standard becomes the operative one, which simplifies compliance for a multi-jurisdiction Maryland portfolio that previously had to track different local rules in different counties or cities.

The practical starting point is separating internal screening procedures into the two distinct stages this law creates: the pre-offer stage, where no criminal history question is allowed except to check against the narrow rejectable-offense list, and the post-offer stage, where a check can run but any withdrawal has to go through the individualized-assessment factors and generate a compliant adverse-action notice.

Updating the pre-application notice given before collecting any application fee, and reviewing existing rental advertisements for language about criminal history disqualification, closes two of the more overlooked compliance gaps in this law relative to the more widely covered ban-the-box provision.