Secretary of State

What this checks

Confirms that the carrier FMCSA names actually exists as a legal entity in its state of formation, is in current good standing, and discloses what the state's filing reveals about it. That typically includes the formation date, the registered agent, and — where the state's registry structures it that way — the officers, members, or managers.

If the FMCSA record says "Acme Trucking LLC, Texas," this check asks the Texas Secretary of State whether Acme Trucking LLC is currently registered, currently in good standing, and who's on the filing.

Where the data comes from

Every US state runs its own corporate-records system, and they vary wildly — some publish a free bulk download of the whole registry, most wall their search behind a CAPTCHA or login, a few only sell the data. Rather than scrape a state's site live (which they actively block, and which would hammer their servers), this check mirrors each state's own free bulk release into a local copy that's refreshed on a schedule, then reads from that copy at lookup time. A lookup is instant and puts zero load on the state.

Ten states are automated today — their entire business-entity registry is mirrored from a free public source:

State	Source
Florida	Sunbiz nightly SFTP bulk download
Texas	Comptroller franchise-tax API
New York	data.ny.gov open data
Connecticut	data.ct.gov open data
Colorado	data.colorado.gov open data
Iowa	data.iowa.gov open data
Oregon	data.oregon.gov open data
Pennsylvania	data.pa.gov open data
Washington DC	Open Data DC (ArcGIS)
Alaska	state Division of Corporations bulk files

For these, the result comes straight from the mirror: entity status, formation date, and — where the source carries it — the registered agent, returned immediately.

Every other state is manual-verify — and every one is covered. Where there's no free automated path, the check doesn't guess. It returns honestly that the state isn't automated and prints the state's official public-lookup URL, so the broker can confirm by hand and attest to it. That attestation is captured on the sealed cert, so the diligence is documented either way.

Coverage is complete: all 50 states, plus Washington DC and Puerto Rico, have a working lookup link. The 41 manual-verify states (and Puerto Rico) are:

Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming, and Puerto Rico.

States move and retire their corporate-search pages more often than you'd think, so every one of these links is checked on a regular schedule — a link that breaks gets caught and fixed rather than left for you to stumble onto.

There is no automated result we can't back with real data. A state is either mirrored from a free source — the ten above — or it's an honest manual-verify link. We never fabricate a status for a state we can't actually reach. The automated list grows as more states publish their registries as open data.

What you'll see

• Entity status. Active, delinquent, dissolved, not found, or not verified (a manual-verify state).
• Formation date. When the entity was first registered. Useful as a sanity check against the FMCSA authority grant date — a carrier whose FMCSA authority predates their state formation by ten years is worth a closer look.
• Registered agent. Who the state has on file to receive service of process, where the source exposes it.
• Officers / members / managers. Where the state's filing discloses them. Useful as an input to the owner corroboration check.

Statuses:

• Clean — entity is active and in good standing.
• Flag — entity is delinquent (filings or fees behind, but not dissolved), or the FMCSA legal name doesn't match the SoS legal name closely enough.
• Alert — entity is dissolved, withdrawn, or not found in the state of formation. A carrier whose legal entity has been formally dissolved cannot lawfully operate under that name.
• Not Verified — a manual-verify state. The state's public lookup URL is shown so you can confirm by hand.

What this does NOT tell you

• It does not validate that the entity operates what FMCSA says it operates. Many transportation LLCs exist on paper for years before they take a load. State formation is a paper fact, not an operational fact.
• It does not catch a carrier formed in a different state from the one their FMCSA principal address suggests. A Wyoming LLC with a Texas operating address is common and not itself suspicious; the check confirms the entity exists in the state FMCSA names. Where a state's record exposes the formation jurisdiction (Colorado and Oregon do), a mismatch is surfaced as a foreign-entity note so you can re-run against the real state of formation.
• It does not check entity status across states. A carrier dissolved in their state of formation but registered as a foreign entity in another state will show as Alert in the first state and be missed in the second. The Module 7 owner check is the place where cross-state patterns get caught.
• It does not verify the listed officers are real, identifiable people. That's the job of the owner corroboration check.

What to do with the result

Things people commonly weigh:

• A dissolved entity is the loudest signal here. A carrier whose legal home no longer recognizes them is a carrier whose insurance policies, authority, and contracts may all be on thin ice.
• A delinquent entity (behind on annual fees, missing filings) is less severe but worth flagging. State delinquency tends to correlate with operational distress.
• A formation date that's days or weeks before the FMCSA authority grant date is consistent with a fresh entity. Combined with the chameleon scan in the FMCSA check, this is the kind of pattern Montgomery was decided around.
• The officer names from the SoS filing feed directly into the owner corroboration check as one of the ten independent confirmations.

Why it matters under Montgomery

The Kavanaugh concurrence describes the standard as "asking the hard questions." The hardest, simplest version of that question is "is this carrier a real, current legal entity?" The Secretary of State check is the documented answer.

References

• Each state's SoS business-entity registry. Automated states link to the entity's official detail page from the check's report popout; manual-verify states link to the state's public search so you can confirm by hand.
• The original module design is internal.