The state on Monday launches a new online system to check criminal backgrounds that would provide wider and easier access for employers, but limit their searches of criminal history to 10 years back.

That limit, part of a new law that updates the system known as CORI, for Criminal Offender Record Information, is sparking a debate that pits the rights of employers to know the history of job applicants against the needs of people with decades-old convictions to work and move ahead with their lives.

It is also raising questions about the role of lightly regulated background-screening companies, which can dig far back into court records, sometimes reporting erroneous information about applicants to employers.

A coalition of 125 community organizations, religious institutions, and labor unions has proposed barring screening companies from using the state’s central system if they continue to rely on court records to gather more information than they can get in the registry. No other state has prohibited screening companies from using its CORI system if they also use the courts.

“The intent of the CORI law is to ensure that criminal records that are nonconvictions, very old convictions, or inaccurate would not be used against them and prevent them from getting housing or employment in the future,’’ said Steve O’Neill, of Ex-prisoners and Prisoners Organizing for Community Advancement, an advocacy group in Worcester.

But the National Association of Professional Background Screeners, a trade group in Schaumburg, Ill., opposes limits on gathering information.

“We find that we have more accurate information when we go to the primary source,’’ said board member Christine Cunneen, chief executive of Hire Image, a Rhode Island screening company. “I think it would actually harm Massachusetts employers to put restrictions on what information they’re allowed to use.’’