GLOGood Lookin’ Out

North Carolina regulations: details

Copied from the state’s website on September 20, 2026 (a fetch date only — no page prints a date). Check the official page before you rely on a rule.

What is here

45,965 entries from 532 chapter pages on the Office of Administrative Hearings’ rules website, covering 26 titles.
ONLY 19,753 CARRY RULE TEXT. The other 26,212 are rule numbers the state prints with nothing behind them: 21,593 whose History says repealed, 2,826 expired, 315 recodified or transferred, 714 reserved for future codification, 580 with no History at all, and 184 whose History says something else. This is the largest single fact about this source and the easiest to misread.
Keyword search runs over rule text, so those 26,212 are nearly invisible to it. Finding nothing here NEVER means the rule does not exist. Look it up by number instead.
19,620 entries are numbers the state prints in a run sharing ONE body and ONE History Note — runs reach 77 numbers. On those entries the History covers the whole run, not that number alone, and the entry says so.
25,508 are rules the state prints on their own, 862 are numbers held open as reserved, and 40 are chapter pages that print no rule at all, only a codifier’s note.

How we checked it

We compared all 45,965 entries against a second program written separately to read the same pages, matching the text and the History by checksum. Zero disagreed.
We compared 238 entries with the state’s own Word file for that rule, a separate version of the same text. The typical entry matched every word, and 1 fell below our threshold. Only 238 of the 399 entries we drew have such a file, so this check is silent on the other 161.
We checked every rule head in the whole corpus against the state’s own file listing. Zero were left unexplained.
A person read one entry from each of 20 visible kinds against the state’s pages. That read found a real error every automatic check had passed; it was repaired and the whole load re-run.
A person then read 150 random entries line by line against their own pages. 0 disagreed. This is a thin margin, and we say so: at that sample size 2 bad entries would still pass and 3 would fail.
One judgment call is on the record because it changes that result. On 14 of those 150 the state prints the citation in lower or mixed case and we store the number in capitals — same rule, same number, same words, and the state’s own rendering is kept exactly in the heading. We did that because this publisher’s capitalization varies inside a single chapter, so copying it would file one citation two ways and break lookup. Counted as errors instead, the rate is 14 of 150 and the check FAILS. If you reject that call, read this check as failed, not passed.
These are samples. They can show a problem exists; they cannot prove there are no others. They show the copy is faithful to the page; they cannot prove the page is right.

What it can't tell you

Whether a rule is current or in force today. Not one of the 532 pages prints a date of any kind. September 20, 2026 is the day we copied it and nothing more.
Whether this is the official edition. We looked and could not establish it, so we do not claim it.
Whether a rule is correct as law or has been challenged. Nothing here says so.
Which copy is live when the state publishes the same number twice. We return every copy and never choose one for you.
The dates inside a rule’s text are that rule’s own effective and transfer dates. They are not a statement that the page is current.

Known gaps

One listed chapter, 08 NCAC 19, is not here at all: the state lists it as reserved and its file answers “not found.”
123 entries have no rule number, because the chapter page prints no rule head — usually a note that the chapter was transferred, recodified or reserved. You can find these by keyword, never by citation.
130 numbers are printed by the state under two entries each, 265 entries in all. Looking one up returns both.
13 NCAC 05 is published in two folders, a live one and a repealed twin, printing many of the same numbers. Both copies are carried as found.
32 entries show a two-digit rule number (.01) where the state’s own file for that same rule uses four (.0101). We keep what the page prints, so a four-digit search will not find them.
406 numbers in the state’s file listing have no rule head on the page, and 632 heads are not in the listing. Every one falls in a named class and none is an error of ours; they are places the state’s own two lists disagree. 16 are heads the listing has no file for, which we never read as the rule being absent from the Code.
Tables and long attachments are shown as the page lays them out. The longest entry runs 102,213 characters of rule text (15A NCAC 03Q .0202).
The state’s site refused a secure connection, so the copy was made over plain HTTP. We recorded that rather than working around it. The site publishes no robots file; we re-checked for one before every run.

Notes you may see on an entry

21,593 entries: “The state prints NO rule text for this number. Its History Note says the rule was repealed. That is what the state prints, not a finding by us about what is in force.”
2,826 entries: “The state prints NO rule text for this number. Its History Note says the rule expired.”
315 entries: “The state prints NO rule text for this number. Its History says it was recodified or transferred. Any text is under the new number; we do not follow it there for you.”
714 entries: “The state prints this number as reserved for future codification: a number held open, with no rule text behind it.”
580 entries: “The state prints NO rule text and NO History Note for this number, so nothing here tells you why it is empty.”
19,620 entries printed in a run: “The state prints this number in a run of N rule numbers sharing ONE History Note, so the History here covers the whole run, not this number alone.”
547 entries (480 Utilities Commission, 63 State Bar): “The state numbers this rule in its own scheme rather than as an NCAC number, and the head prints only the short form (R1-01, Rule 1.00). We add the chapter so the citation resolves; the bare short form works here too.”
142 entries in 13 NCAC 05: “The state publishes this chapter in two folders, a live one and a repealed twin. Both copies are carried; which is live is in each copy’s own History, never in the folder name.”
17 entries: “The state’s head for this rule carries a typographical error (a misspelled code word, a moved dot, a missing or extra space). The head is shown exactly as printed; the number is corrected only so the rule can be found.”
26 entries: “The head prints a title or chapter prefix that does not match the folder it is filed under. We keep what the head prints and never re-file it.”
4 entries: “The state breaks this rule’s caption across two printed lines; both are joined here in the order printed.”
A lookup of N.C. Gen. Stat. or G.S.: “That is North Carolina statute law, not the Administrative Code. The lookup says so rather than returning nothing — rule History Notes cite G.S. on nearly every entry.”

Nothing here is legal advice or a judgment that a rule is in force. Full counts for software: the defect_floor field on every North Carolina result (source=nc).