HB 1945 Oklahoma House · 2026 Regular Session

Landlord and tenant; apartments and hotels; background checks; keys; hourly rates; effective date.

HB 1945 requires landlords, owners, or operators of apartment buildings or hotels with five or more rental units to conduct background checks on all employees. The checks must include criminal history and sex offender registry searches across all states, and disqualify applicants convicted of violent crimes like assault or sexual battery. Landlords must also maintain logs tracking key issuance and returns for each unit and create policies for key storage and access. The law takes effect November 1, 2025, directly affecting commercial lodging businesses with five or more units.

Bill status in committee 1 of 4 stages cleared

Introduction

Feb 2025

Committee Review

Floor Vote

Governor

Introduced Feb 3, 2025 Last action Feb 24, 2025

Maddy AI version diff · 1 comparison

What changed between versions

Introduced → Proposed Policy Committee Substitute 1 · 3 edits

MINOR

The bill was amended by the Policy Committee to add a new requirement that only landlords, owners, or operators of at least five rental units or properties must require background checks for employees. This significantly narrows the scope of who must comply with the background check mandate compared to the original version, which applied to all public lodging establishments regardless of size.

Scope change

The bill now only applies to landlords, owners, or operators of at least five rental units or properties, whereas the original version applied to all public lodging establishments including apartments and hotels without a minimum size threshold.

ELIGIBILITY

Added a requirement that the landlord, owner, or operator must have at least five rental units or properties to be subject to the background check mandate.

REQUIREMENT

Modified the applicability of the background screening requirement from all public lodging establishments to only those with five or more rental units or properties.

TECHNICAL

Updated the bill title from 'As Introduced' to 'Proposed Policy Committee Substitute' and changed the request number from 11097 to 12752.

Floor votes

How they voted

No floor votes recorded yet.

Full legislative history

Actions timeline

Total actions

Key actions

Committee

Feb 24, 2025

Lower · Passed

Policy recommendation to the Judiciary and Public Safety Oversight committee; Do Pass, amended by committee substitute Civil Judiciary

lower

Feb 4, 2025

Committee

Referred to Civil Judiciary

lower

Feb 3, 2025

Introduced

First Reading

lower

2 primary · 0 co-sponsors