Tenant Screening Criteria: What California Fair Housing Law Allows

The call comes in some version of this a few times a year. An owner has an applicant he wants to turn down. The income checks out, the rental history is clean, and the reason he gives is the voucher. He doesn't want the inspection, or he's heard things. He isn't trying to break any law. He just doesn't know that refusing an applicant for that reason has been unlawful in California since the start of 2020.

That's the shape of nearly every fair housing problem I see. Not an owner with bad intent. An owner working from a criterion that sounded reasonable to him, or one that was fine fifteen years ago and isn't now.

California protects more than federal law does, and the list has kept growing. Here's what you can screen on, what you can't, and the paperwork that makes a lawful decision still look lawful two years later when somebody asks.

Key takeaways

• California's protected characteristics go well past the federal seven, and include source of income, citizenship, immigration status, primary language, age, and military or veteran status.
• "No Section 8" is unlawful advertising here, and a voucher holder's income has to be measured against the tenant's share of the rent rather than the whole rent.
• Blanket criminal-record bans are prohibited, and arrests that produced no conviction, sealed or expunged records, and juvenile matters are off the table entirely.
• You may verify that an applicant can pay. You may not ask about immigration or citizenship status.
• Charging a screening fee now commits you to one of two processes: review completed applications in the order they arrive, or refund the fee to everyone you don't select.
• The criteria matter less than whether they were written down first and applied to every applicant the same way.

The California list is longer than most owners think

Federal law protects seven characteristics. California's Fair Employment and Housing Act, at Government Code section 12955, covers race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, national origin, ancestry, familial status, source of income, disability, veteran or military status, and genetic information.

The Civil Rights Department, which enforces it, also lists citizenship, immigration status, primary language, and age, plus protections for the right to run a licensed family child care business out of a home and for people with criminal histories looking for housing.

Nobody gets a complaint filed against them for saying a protected word out loud. The complaint comes from a neutral-sounding rule applied unevenly, and from a file that can't show why.

Source of income is where good owners get caught

Section 12955(p)(1) defines source of income as lawful, verifiable income paid to a tenant, to a tenant's representative, or to the landlord on the tenant's behalf. It names federal, state and local public assistance and housing subsidies, including Section 8 vouchers and HUD-VASH vouchers.

Three practical consequences follow, and the second one is the one that gets missed.

You can't screen the voucher out of the ad. "No Section 8" is unlawful. So is refusing to complete the housing authority's paperwork, or cooperating with everyone except the applicant holding a subsidy.

Your income standard runs against the tenant's portion of the rent. Section 12955(o)(1)(A) says a financial or income standard has to be based on the portion of the rent the tenant will actually pay. An owner who applies a flat three-times-the-rent rule to a voucher holder is usually measuring against a number that tenant was never going to pay, and that is how a reasonable-sounding policy becomes a violation without anyone deciding to discriminate.

Credit history isn't the only road. Where there's a government rent subsidy, section 12955(o)(1)(B) requires you to offer the applicant the option of showing ability to pay with something other than credit history, such as benefit payment records, pay records, or bank statements. If they take the option, you give them reasonable time to gather it and you consider it in place of credit history.

You may still ask about income. Section 12955(p)(2) is explicit that an inquiry about the level or source of income isn't discrimination by itself. The question is what you do with the answer.

Criminal history: no blanket bans, and the order matters

California's fair housing regulations handle criminal history in title 2 of the Code of Regulations, article 24, starting at section 12264. The Civil Rights Department's own guidance is the clearest summary of what they require.

A blanket ban against anyone with a criminal record is unlawful. Arrests that didn't result in a conviction can't support an adverse action, and neither can sealed records, expunged records, or juvenile matters.

The sequence is part of the rule. The regulations push you to verify the rest of an applicant's qualifications first and review a third-party criminal history report after, so that a record isn't the lens everything else gets read through. When a conviction does come up, the question is whether it bears directly on this person's tenancy and on the health, safety or property of other people. Nature and seriousness of the offense, how long ago it happened, what the applicant has done since, and any mitigating information they offer all belong in that assessment.

The honest consequence is that screening takes longer than it used to. An owner who wants a same-day yes or no on a thin file is asking for the version of this that gets him in trouble.

You can verify the money. You can't ask about status.

Civil Code section 1940.3 is short and worth knowing. A landlord may not make any inquiry regarding or based on a tenant's immigration or citizenship status, and may not require a tenant or applicant to disclose or certify it. The same section preserves what you actually need: you may still request the information necessary to verify a prospective tenant's identity and financial qualifications, and you may comply with federal law or a court order.

In practice that's a clean line. Ask for identification and for documentation of income. Verify the person and verify the money. Status isn't a question you get to ask, and it isn't a question you need answered to decide whether somebody can pay rent.

What you can screen on

Plenty, as it turns out:

• A written rent-to-income standard, computed against the applicant's own share of the rent
• Credit history, read for payment patterns rather than a single number, with the alternative above offered where a subsidy applies
• Verified rental history and references from prior landlords
• A public-record eviction search
• An occupancy standard, so long as it's a reasonable one. A tight limit on people per bedroom falls hardest on households with children, and familial status is protected

The criteria themselves are rarely the problem. What makes them hold is writing them down before the property goes on the market and applying them identically to everyone who applies, which is a different article and one we've already written on how we screen.

The paperwork that proves you did it right

Civil Code section 1950.6 governs the screening fee, and it got stricter.

The fee can't exceed your actual out-of-pocket screening costs plus the reasonable value of the time you spend, and the statute caps it at thirty dollars per applicant as a base figure that has been adjustable by the Consumer Price Index each year since 1998. The 2026 ceiling is therefore higher than thirty dollars, and it's a number to look up rather than estimate.

You owe the applicant an itemized receipt, delivered personally or by mail, or by email if you've agreed to that. If you never ran the reference check or pulled the report, you return the part of the fee you didn't use. If the applicant paid a fee and you pulled a consumer credit report, they get a copy of it within seven days of your receiving it.

And as the statute reads in 2026, collecting the fee commits you to one of two processes. Either you consider completed applications against your established criteria in the order you received them, or you return the entire screening fee to any applicant you don't select, within seven days of choosing someone or thirty days of their application, whichever comes first. Pick one and say which in writing, because the choice is made when you take the money.

One more that owners forget. If you decline someone based wholly or partly on a consumer credit report, Civil Code section 1785.20 requires written notice of the adverse action, the name, address and telephone number of the agency that furnished the report, a statement that your decision was based on it, and notice of the applicant's right to a free copy and to dispute what's in it.

Where this leaves you

A written, lawful standard applied the same way every time does more than protect you from a complaint. It also lets you decline an owner's brother-in-law's friend without having the conversation twice.

If you self-manage, the cheapest version of all this is a one-page written standard, a consistent file for every applicant, and a calendar reminder to check the fee ceiling each year. If you'd rather hand it off, screening is part of what we do on every home we manage in Riverside and across the Inland Empire, and how our fees work is laid out in plain terms.

This is general information about California law as it stood in October 2026, not legal advice about your property. Rules in this area change most years, and a local ordinance can be stricter than the state floor.