Trade License With a Felony: Predetermination Requests

Between 2022 and 2024, Virginia's Board for Contractors received 16,268 applications and denied two of them over criminal history. The state publishes that figure itself, on the same page where it explains how to file a predetermination request: a denial rate of 0.012 percent.

Then it publishes something else, further down the FAQ of that same predetermination page: "A denial cannot be reconsidered, and you will not be able to reapply absent a court order or new convictions."

So in Virginia the cautious move — ask first, find out before you spend four years accumulating hours — is the one with a trapdoor under it. In Texas the same question costs ten dollars, and the rule that governs it says the answer cannot stop you from applying anyway. Same question. Opposite risk.

I read every source below on 18 August 2026. What follows quotes rules; it does not predict what a board will decide, and it is not legal advice.

The phrase everything turns on

Almost no state says it denies people with records. It says a conviction may count only if it directly relates to the occupation. That phrase is defined.

Pennsylvania's Department of State spells it out in its Act 53 of 2020 Best Practices Guide, revisions effective 19 October 2024:

A "directly related" crime is significant. It means that in the board's view, the nature of the criminal conduct has a direct bearing on a person's fitness or ability to perform the tasks, duties or responsibilities necessarily related to a particular profession or occupation.

The same guide then breaks register, in capitals with the negative underlined: "PLEASE NOTE: THIS DOES NOT NECESSARILY MEAN YOU WILL BE DENIED A LICENSE."

Other states turn the phrase into a checklist. Tex. Occ. Code 53.022 gives five factors a licensing authority "shall consider," including "any correlation between the elements of the crime and the duties and responsibilities of the licensed occupation." If the answer comes back yes, it relates, then 53.023 adds seven more — age at the time, time elapsed, conduct before and after, evidence of rehabilitation, compliance with supervision, letters of recommendation. Subsection (b) puts the burden of collecting those letters on you.

Va. Code 54.1-204 merges both lists into nine factors and adds a sentence worth memorising: "A regulatory board shall not use vague or arbitrary terms, including 'good moral character' or 'moral turpitude' to refuse a license, certificate, or registration."

North Carolina's G.S. 93B-8.1 does the same thing and then carves an exception straight back out. A board may deny "only if the board finds that the applicant's criminal conviction history is directly related to the duties and responsibilities for the licensed occupation or the conviction is for a crime that is violent or sexual in nature." For that second category the relatedness question never has to be answered. It is not a free hand, though: the same subsection says a board "shall not automatically deny licensure on the basis of an applicant's criminal history," and (b1) lists the factors it must specifically consider first — the date of the crime, the age of the person then, prison and employment records since, completion of drug or alcohol treatment, and a Certificate of Relief under G.S. 15A-173.2 among them. Read that text at the General Assembly rather than in a reprint. The citation line at the end of the section now runs through 2025-51, s. 3(c), while the widely indexed FindLaw copy is labelled current only through 1 January 2023.

Four names, and only three of them carry a price

Where the mechanism exists at all, it is called something different in each state, which is why searching your board's site for "predetermination" often returns nothing.

North Carolina's version is the one built with the applicant in mind. G.S. 93B-8.1(b7) says an unfavorable predetermination "is not a final agency decision" and gives you no right to judicial review, which reads badly until you get to (b8), where a favorable one "is binding if both of the following apply": you apply for licensure and fulfill "all other requirements for the occupational license," and your "submitted criminal history was correct and remains unchanged at the time of application for a license." A no costs you the fee. A yes is money in the bank.

The statute also makes the board tell an unsuccessful petitioner, in writing, that they have "the right to complete any requirements for licensure, to apply to the board, and to have the petitioner's application considered by the board under its application process," and that "further evidence of rehabilitation will be considered upon application." Budget for a second bill while you are here: (b6) requires the petition to include a criminal history record report "obtained by the individual from a reporting service designated by the board, the cost of which shall be borne by the applicant." The $45 ceiling is on the board recouping its own costs, not on that report.

Texas has three documents on this question and they do not line up, so it is worth knowing which one says what. 16 TAC 60.42(h) says the determination "may not be appealed" and "does not prohibit or prevent a person from enrolling or attending an educational program, taking a licensing examination, or applying for a license." Subsection (g) of the same rule says the department "is not bound by its determination" in two situations only — the requestor failed to disclose known relevant information, or the person's circumstances changed after the letter issued. Tex. Occ. Code 53.104(b), the subsection that covers an unfavorable answer, is drawn the same shape: "In the absence of new evidence known to but not disclosed by the requestor or not reasonably available to the licensing authority at the time the letter is issued, the authority's ruling on the request determines the requestor's eligibility."

Then there is the web page. TDLR's own evaluation letter page states it flatly the other way, and repeats the sentence in its FAQ answers for a yes and for a no: "Any recommendation stated in an evaluation letter is not binding on the Department." It also lists "a change in the Department's policies relating to applicants' criminal backgrounds" as a reason the answer could move later — a reason that appears in neither the rule nor the code section. Nothing published reconciles the three, and $10 does not buy a resolution. Keep the letter, the rule and the section number in one folder, and do not build a four-year plan on the letter holding.

Virginia is the outlier and does not hide it. Attestation 7 on form A406-01PREDET, version 07/01/2025, requires you to initial this line: "A determination that you are disqualified from obtaining licensure is binding upon the Board and cannot be reconsidered absent a court order or change to your convictions." DPOR then recommends against the route for most readers — "for most applicants with a criminal record, application with appropriate criminal history disclosure provides an appropriate route to licensure" — and reserves it for "those enrolling in lengthy or costly training programs."

The two Virginia documents also describe the hearing differently, which matters if you are working out how long this takes. The web page answers "What is the process?" with "An Informal Fact-Finding Conference will be held to issue a binding ineligibility/eligibility determination." The form is narrower: department staff may clear a record that does not disqualify, and "when an individual's criminal convictions may result in disqualification, the matter must be referred for an Informal Fact-Finding ('IFF') Conference and then presented to the Board for a final decision." Submitting the form is your consent to that referral. Neither document puts a number of days on any of it.

Nobody can make you finish the training first

This is the part that decides whether the whole process is worth anything, because the expensive part of a trade license is never the application fee.

Virginia says it in one line. 54.1-204.1(C): "No licensing authority shall require an individual to complete any educational or training requirements prior to submitting a request for predetermination." The form carries the same promise as attestation 1, which you have to initial: you may submit a request "at any time, including before you start or complete any training or examination requirements." North Carolina's 93B-8.1(b6) lets an individual with a criminal history petition "at any time, including before the individual starts or completes any mandatory education or training requirements."

Texas is messier. The statute, 53.102(a)(1), appears to gate the request on being "enrolled or planning to enroll in an educational program" or "planning to take an examination for an initial license." But 16 TAC 60.42(b) drops that condition entirely, and TDLR's FAQ answers the question in one word: "No, you do not have to be in school or receiving any education to request the evaluation letter." Read the rule, not only the code section.

The timing is worth real money. A Texas journeyman card takes 8,000 hours of supervised work under a licensed master — you may sit the exam at 7,000 — with an apprentice license renewed annually the whole way, and the NEC softbound alone lists at $169 — the arithmetic is in what a journeyman license costs in three states. Trucking is worse, because school quotes swing by a factor of five and almost all of that money leaves your account before any credential exists; the line items are in the CDL cost breakdown. A $10 letter answered inside 90 days sits in front of both of those bills.

Two places a board's judgment does not reach

A CDL. Nobody is weighing factors here and there is nothing to petition. 49 CFR 383.51 runs off a table. A first conviction for being under the influence of alcohol disqualifies you from operating a commercial motor vehicle for one year, and Table 1 applies that same one year whether the conviction happened in a CMV or in your own car. Three years if you were carrying hazardous materials. A second conviction from a separate incident, in any combination of the offenses in that table, is life. Using a vehicle in a felony involving "manufacturing, distributing, or dispensing a controlled substance" is listed as "Life-not eligible for 10-year reinstatement" in every column, which shuts off the rehabilitation route that 383.51(a)(6) leaves open for the other major offenses. Checked against the eCFR on 18 August 2026, which reported Title 49 as last amended 7 August 2026 and up to date as of 14 August 2026.

The contractor who hires you. A license is permission to work, not a job, and the two are governed by different rulebooks. The EEOC's Enforcement Guidance No. 915.002, dated 4/25/2012, was still posted on 18 August 2026 carrying the line "This Notice will remain in effect until rescinded or superseded." It asks employers to weigh the Green factors — the nature and gravity of the offense, the time that has passed, and the nature of the job held or sought — and treats a targeted screen followed by an individualized assessment as the safer practice, while saying in the same passage that "Title VII does not require individualized assessment in all circumstances." It binds no licensing board, and the EEOC's own header notes that its guidance documents lack "the force and effect of law." Winning the card and winning the callback are separate arguments made to separate audiences.

What the packet actually has to contain

Virginia's form is the most explicit of the four, so it works as a packing list even if your state's version is thinner.

• A criminal history record for every jurisdiction where you have a conviction. Virginia residents order theirs from the State Police; convictions elsewhere need an original official record from each state, or an FBI Identity History Summary. If more than 90 days pass between the request and a later license application, you have to produce a fresh one.
• One table row per conviction — jurisdiction, offense, felony or misdemeanor, date, disposition, current status.
• What counts as a conviction: any local, county, state, federal, military or foreign misdemeanor or felony; a guilty verdict, a guilty plea, or a plea of nolo contendere; and a conviction as a minor if you were tried as an adult. What must not be reported: anything pardoned, dismissed, set aside, reversed or expunged, and anything adjudicated in juvenile court. Pennsylvania goes further and bars boards from considering juvenile adjudications at all.
• A separate written narrative — optional on paper, and the one part of the file you control. The form says you may, on a separate sheet and for each conviction, explain the facts and circumstances, describe your conduct and work activities before and after, and set out how you have changed, attaching classes, program status, rehabilitation documentation and reference letters. There is a Criminal Conviction Supplemental Form for it. Optional is not the same as unimportant: this is the 53.023-style evidence wearing another state's clothes, and the board is weighing those nine factors with or without your version of events. If the records themselves no longer exist, Virginia wants that said in writing, with a letter from the agency, police department or court records custodian confirming they are unavailable.
• A clean docket. Virginia will not issue a determination while a charge is pending, and if you are mid-appeal the board decides on the conviction as it currently stands.

Three footnotes that rarely make it into summaries. Virginia warns, in small type at the bottom of the signature page, that predetermination requests and supporting documents "may be subject to disclosure under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act" — and separately that your e-mail address "is considered a public record and will be disclosed upon request from a third party." North Carolina went the other way on the same question: under 93B-8.1(b6), "criminal history records relating to a predetermination petition are not public records under Chapter 132 of the General Statutes." And TDLR will not process a request at all unless the $10 fee and a completed questionnaire for each offense arrive together — an incomplete packet comes back, it does not sit in a queue.

Finding out whether your own state has one

Plenty of states do not offer this, and the ones that do bury it under different vocabulary. Search your board's site for predetermination, preliminary determination, criminal history evaluation, and determination of eligibility; one of the four usually hits when the others return nothing. The Collateral Consequences Resource Center maintains a 50-state comparison of licensing standards that works well as a map. Treat it as an index and finish in the statute, because this is a fast-moving corner of the law and the recent dates are on the sections themselves: Virginia's predetermination section is 2025, c. 505, on a form revised 07/01/2025; North Carolina's carries amendments in 2019, 2020, 2023 and 2025; Texas rewrote Chapter 53 in 2019 and last amended 16 TAC 60.42 effective 1 January 2023; Pennsylvania's guide took its current revisions on 19 October 2024. A summary written two years ago is not safe to rely on.

The asymmetry is the whole decision

Before you send anything, find the sentence in your state's rule that answers one question: what happens if the answer is no.

North Carolina hands you back the right to apply anyway and to bring rehabilitation evidence with you. Texas says the determination "does not prohibit or prevent a person from... applying for a license." Virginia asks you to initial a paragraph confirming that a no is final.

That sentence, not the fee and not the turnaround time, is what you are actually buying.