Minnesota Tenant Screening Law 2025: Three New Duties

Minnesota Laws Chapter 118 amended three separate statutory sections in one bill: Section 7 changed the ITIN rule, Section 12 changed the eviction-denial rule, and Section 22 changed the screening company verification rule. All three took effect the same day, January 1, 2025, but they impose different duties on different parties.

[Cite: 2024 Minnesota Laws, Chapter 118, Sections 7, 12, 22]

A landlord who only updated an application form to accept ITINs, and stopped there, has addressed one of three obligations this law created.

A landlord must offer a rental applicant the option to provide either a Social Security number or an ITIN, and can't deny an application solely because the applicant provided an ITIN.

[Cite: Minnesota Statutes, section 504B.117]

That's a narrow but specific protection. It targets the act of denying someone purely for using an ITIN instead of an SSN, not the broader question of how that applicant's financial qualifications get evaluated.

The statute preserves a landlord's ability to deny an application if the consumer credit report attached to that applicant's ITIN turns out to be insufficient.

[Cite: Minnesota Statutes, section 504B.117]

A landlord evaluating an ITIN-based application still needs a legitimate, credit-based reason for denial; it just can't be the ITIN itself. That distinction matters for how a landlord documents a denial decision.

Neither the statute itself, nor any secondary legal source reviewed for this article, specifies a dedicated penalty or damages provision tied to a violation of this ITIN rule.

[Cite: Minnesota Statutes, section 504B.117]

That's worth stating plainly rather than assuming this rule shares the same $100 civil penalty structure that applies to the separate eviction-denial rule discussed below. A landlord should treat this as an active legal obligation regardless of the uncertain enforcement mechanism, not as a lower-priority rule because its remedy isn't as clearly defined.

A landlord can't deny a rental application based on a pending eviction action, any court file that isn't public, has been expunged, or has been destroyed, or any eviction action that didn't result in a writ of recovery of the premises and an order to vacate.

[Cite: Minnesota Statutes, section 504B.173, subdivision 3a]

That third category, an eviction action without a writ of recovery, covers a meaningful share of real-world eviction filings: cases settled before judgment, cases the landlord withdrew, or cases the tenant won.

A Minnesota eviction filing doesn't automatically mean the tenant lost. A case only results in a writ of recovery when the landlord actually wins and a court orders the tenant to vacate.

[Cite: Minnesota Statutes, section 504B.173, subdivision 3a]

An applicant with an eviction filing on their record that never reached that outcome, because it was dismissed, settled, or the landlord didn't pursue it, is legally protected from denial based on that filing alone.

A landlord who denies an application in violation of this rule is liable for the applicant screening fee, a civil penalty of up to $100, civil court filing costs, and reasonable attorney fees incurred to enforce the remedy.

[Cite: Minnesota Statutes, section 504B.173, subdivision 4(a)]

That's a defined, bounded remedy, unlike the ITIN rule's unclear enforcement path discussed above. A landlord facing a challenge under this specific provision has a much clearer sense of maximum exposure than under the ITIN rule.

The third provision doesn't restrict what a landlord can deny an applicant for at all. It requires a tenant screening company to update and verify the current status of court files by accessing Minnesota Court Records Online no more than 24 hours before issuing a residential tenant screening report.

[Cite: Minnesota Statutes, section 504B.241, subdivision 4(b)]

A landlord doesn't perform this verification themselves; it's a duty that falls on whatever screening company or service the landlord hires to run background checks.

Court case statuses change. A case that was pending a week ago might have been dismissed, settled, or resolved by the time a landlord actually reviews a screening report, and an outdated report could reflect a status that's no longer accurate.

[Cite: Minnesota Statutes, section 504B.241, subdivision 4(b)]

Requiring verification within 24 hours of the report's issuance is meant to close that staleness gap, so a landlord's screening decision is based on a court record that's actually current, not weeks old.

A screening company isn't liable under the state's separate screening-accuracy statute if it reports complete and accurate information as provided by the court, consistent with that 24-hour verification requirement.

[Cite: Minnesota Statutes, section 504B.241, subdivision 4(d)]

That's a meaningful incentive for a screening company to actually follow the verification process, since doing so creates a specific liability shield that skipping the step would forfeit.

A tenant injured by a screening company's violation of this verification duty can recover the greater of $1,000 or actual damages, along with investigation costs, court costs, and reasonable attorney fees.

[Cite: Minnesota Statutes, section 504B.245]

That's a substantially larger defined remedy than the $100 civil penalty attached to a landlord's eviction-denial violation, which reflects that this provision targets a screening company's data-accuracy process rather than a single denial decision.

A landlord who outsources screening entirely to a third-party company isn't personally performing the 24-hour verification, but is still relying on that company's report to make a rental decision.

[Cite: Minnesota Statutes, section 504B.241, subdivision 4(b)]

Confirming that a screening vendor actually follows this verification requirement is a reasonable due-diligence step for a landlord, since a denial based on a stale or inaccurate report could still expose the landlord to a separate dispute over the eviction-denial rule discussed above, even if the screening company bears its own liability for the outdated data itself.

All three provisions came out of the same 2024 legislative session, as part of a broader landlord-tenant policy bill covering multiple unrelated topics beyond screening.

[Cite: Minnesota Senate, Chapter 118 Act Summary]

That's useful context for a landlord who searched specifically for "Minnesota screening law" and found only partial coverage; the operative citation spans three separate sections of one chapter, not one standalone screening statute.

The practical starting point is updating rental application forms to include the ITIN option alongside the SSN field, and reviewing denial procedures to confirm no application gets rejected based solely on ITIN use, a pending eviction, an expunged record, or an eviction case that never reached a writ of recovery.

For any landlord using a third-party screening company, confirming that vendor's process actually verifies court records within 24 hours of issuing a report, rather than relying on an older database snapshot, closes the compliance gap tied to the screening-company-specific duty.