GLOGood Lookin’ Out

North Dakota regulations: details

Copied from the North Dakota Legislative Council’s chapter PDF files on October 12, 2026. Check the official page before you rely on a rule.

What is here

Release 5: 10,966 sections of the North Dakota Administrative Code, read by us from the 1,984 chapter PDF files the North Dakota Legislative Council posts. Release 1 showed 10,122; Release 2 added 322 sections and 52 listed numbers, each checked against the page text; Release 3 added 33 sections whose History, General Authority and Law Implemented lines were checked against the page; Release 4 added 81 sections and 87 listed numbers from files where some pages have no text layer, after checking that none of those pages prints a section heading; Release 5 adds 408 sections and 809 listed numbers from the 3 files Release 4 held whole, after finding that all but 4 of their flagged pages carry their whole text layer. The publisher last changed every file on October 5, 2026, and we copied them on October 12, 2026.
The publisher says the code is updated with quarterly changes, and that it does not warrant the accuracy, reliability or timeliness of anything on its site. A rule changed after October 5, 2026 is not reflected here.
The files hold 14,392 numbered units. 665 of them, in 216 files, are held and not shown yet, each by name with its reasons: mainly section boundaries our two readers do not agree on, sections whose text stops where a cross-reference starts a line, tables our reader set out with cells on the wrong rows, and History, General Authority or Law Implemented lines of an unexpected order or shape. A held section comes back as held, with its reasons and no text. Held is not absent: the section is in the publisher’s file.
2,744 numbers the files print as repealed, reserved or superseded are listed with the status line the file prints, and no text.
North Dakota shipped in three releases and closed after Release 3. Releases 4 and 5 are from its backlog, taken up again in turn with the other closed sources. The held units stay held, by name with their reasons, until we come back to them. Nothing held is shown before it is checked.
17 lines one of our readers took for section headings are cross-references to a section of another chapter that the file prints at the start of a line. They are not sections, and are not counted among the units.
It is not the official text. It is our reading of the publisher’s files, and every answer links to the file and page it came from.
Look a section up by its number, as in 45-05-01-04, N.D. Admin. Code § 45-05-01-04 or NDAC 45-05-01-04. It comes back with its caption, its text and the History, General Authority and Law Implemented lines the file prints; a long one comes back in pages, and nothing is cut. A chapter number such as 45-05-01 lists its sections: shown, listed and held.

How we checked it

Two separate readers, written with no shared code, read every chapter file. A section is shown only where both agree on its number, caption, text and trailer lines, none of its pages is a scanned page (a page with no text layer), and none of its pages carries a picture the text would leave out.
Before the full run, each reader was shown to stop on planted faults: a shifted number, a dropped heading, two sections run together, a moved History line and a scanned page. One kind of moved History line would pass a single check only, and we say so.
A check run on the whole release confirmed that the shown, listed and held units add up to every unit found, that every chapter file linked was fetched and read by both readers, and that every held unit has a reason.
Before release, a person read 20 shown sections drawn at random against the PDF pages. All 20 matched the page word for word.
For Release 2, each added section was found once, whole, in the text of its file’s pages, with no other heading inside it and with its History, General Authority and Law Implemented lines the page’s own. A person read 12 added sections drawn at random against the PDF pages; all 12 matched word for word. The same person read two sections holding tables that our two readers read in a different word order, found both set out with cells on the wrong rows, and that kind (89 units) stays held.
After Release 2, a person read 8 shown sections laid out as tables, drawn at random, against the PDF pages; all 8 had every cell on its own row.
For Release 3, each added section was found once, whole, in the text of its file’s pages, and the words the page prints after it matched its History, General Authority and Law Implemented lines as our second reader read them (our first reader set a long line’s second half under the wrong label). A person read 8 of the 33 against the PDF pages; all 8 matched. The same person read 6 sections of another kind and found 5 stopping short where a cross-reference starts a line, so that kind (42 units) stays held.
For Release 4, two OCR programs that share no code (RapidOCR, and the OCR built into Windows) read each of the 84 pages with no text layer in 21 files, only to check whether a page prints a section heading, a status line or a History, General Authority or Law Implemented line. We show no text they read. Tested first on 30 pages that do have text, both clean and blurred to look like a scan, the two together found all 105 headings and all 40 History lines, though each alone missed some. Because some of these pages are printed sideways, one program also read each of them turned both ways. In 3 files such a page prints a heading or status line, and Release 4 held those files whole. In the other 18, a section is shown only when none of its pages, and not the page after it, has no text layer. A person looked at 20 of the 84 pages, drawn at random, and none prints a heading; the same person read 20 added sections and numbers against the PDF pages, and all 20 matched.
For Release 5, we looked again at the 15 flagged pages of those 3 files. 11 of them are not scanned: they are short pages (reserved appendix pages, a History block, two table rows) whose text layer holds every line both OCR programs read, and the headings found on them were the text layer’s own, already read by our two readers. The other 4 are an EPA form printed as a picture (Appendix IV of chapter 33.1-24-05) and print no heading. A rule now treats a flagged page as text only when every line both programs read on it is in its own text layer. Tested first, it called all 11 text pages text and all 4 form pages not, and it caught a text layer with one printed line taken out on all 11; its first version, which allowed near matches, missed one of those and was replaced before use. A person looked at all 15 pages, and read 20 added sections and numbers, drawn at random, against the PDF pages; all 20 matched.
Every comparison, read and ruling was made by one person, with no second reader.

What it can't tell you

Whether a rule is in force or valid.
Whether anything changed after the publisher last modified the files on October 5, 2026.
Whether it agrees with any certified or official copy.
Whether a section agrees with the printed page, beyond the 88 units read against it (20 in Release 1, 12 in Release 2, 8 tables after it, 8 in Release 3, 20 in Release 4 and 20 in Release 5) and the checks above.

Known gaps

665 units in 216 files are held and not shown yet, each with its reasons on its answer.
In 19 files with a page that has no text layer (the 18 of Release 4, and chapter 33.1-24-05 with its 4-page EPA form), the sections on or just before such a page stay held, and the page itself (a table, a form or a figure) is not shown.
For 33 sections, the History, General Authority and Law Implemented lines are our second reader’s; the text above them is our first reader’s, as for every other section.
A table that is shown is set out as our reader laid out the page lines and was not checked row by row. Check a table against the publisher’s file before relying on a row.
Where the file breaks a line inside a sentence, the text may show a blank line there.
Bold or italic type, underlining and strike-through are not shown; the words are.
A History, General Authority or Law Implemented line the file prints with no value is not shown.
Where the file prints a number twice, the shown printing says so, and the other is held or listed.
Keyword search reads only the shown sections. Held units and listed numbers have no text here and never match.

Notes you may see on an entry

A held unit: “GLO holds this unit and does not show its text yet, because its two readers did not clear it. Its reasons are listed by name.”
A repealed, reserved or superseded number: “The publisher’s file prints this number with a status line and no rule text; GLO lists it by number with that line as printed.”
A number the file prints twice: “The file prints this number more than once; the other printing is held or listed and not shown as text.”
A section not in this copy: “Not in this copy of the North Dakota Administrative Code, neither shown, listed nor held. That never means the rule does not exist.”

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 Dakota result (source=nd).