 <p>You want to use <a href="http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/join.html" rel="nofollow">Mysql Join</a> to join the two tables together which reference the user id.</p> <p>Account Table</p> <pre><code>CREATE TABLE `account` ( `id` INT UNSIGNED AUTO_INCREMENT, `username` VARCHAR(10) NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY(`id`) ); </code></pre> <p>Suspension Table</p> <pre><code>CREATE TABLE `suspension` ( `user_id` INT UNSIGNED DEFAULT NULL, FOREIGN KEY (`user_id`) REFERENCES account(`id`) ON DELETE CASCADE ON UPDATE CASCADE ); </code></pre> <p>Query</p> <pre><code>SELECT A.username, A.id FROM `account` AS A LEFT JOIN `suspension` AS S ON S.user_id = A.id WHERE A.id = 5 AND S.user_id IS NULL; </code></pre> <p>If the user appears in Suspension, no results are returned. If the user isn't suspended then the user result is returned. To return the user and their suspension status, you can use the below query.</p> <pre><code>SELECT A.username, A.id, (S.user_id IS NOT NULL) AS `suspended` FROM `account` AS A LEFT JOIN `suspension` AS S ON S.user_id = A.id WHERE A.id = 5; </code></pre>