The Clean Slate Act is the general name for state laws that automatically seal or expunge certain criminal records once a person has completed their sentence and gone a set number of years without a new conviction, with no petition, lawyer, or court appearance required. Thirteen states and Washington D.C. have passed some version, Pennsylvania was first in 2018, and a federal Clean Slate Act of 2025 has been introduced in Congress but has not moved. Sealing is narrower than it sounds: the record is hidden from most background checks, but it still exists, and several important situations are unaffected.
Which States Have Passed a Clean Slate Law
Clean Slate is not one law. Each state writes its own, and the eligibility rules differ. The states with Clean Slate statutes, in order of passage, are Pennsylvania, Utah, New Jersey, Connecticut, Michigan, Delaware, Virginia, California, Oklahoma, Colorado, Minnesota, New York, and Illinois, along with Washington D.C. Illinois joined the list in 2025.
At the federal level, H.R. 3114, the Clean Slate Act of 2025, was referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary in April 2025 and has not advanced beyond introduction.1U.S. Congress. H.R. 3114 – Clean Slate Act of 2025 If your state is not on the list above, automatic sealing is not available to you, though traditional petition-based expungement may still be.
Who Qualifies for Automatic Sealing
Every Clean Slate law uses the same three-part frame: finish your full sentence, wait a set number of years without a new conviction, and have an offense the statute actually covers. The numbers vary.
Waiting Periods
For misdemeanors, the required crime-free wait runs from three years in New York to seven years in Connecticut and Michigan. For eligible felonies, it runs from eight years in New York to ten years in Connecticut and Michigan.2New York State Courts. New York State’s Clean Slate Act3State of Connecticut. Clean Slate Eligibility Pennsylvania uses tiers: five years for the lowest-level summary offenses, seven years for second- and third-degree misdemeanors, and ten years for drug-related felonies, which are the only felonies that qualify. Utah’s misdemeanor waits run five to seven years depending on classification.
The clock typically starts from sentencing or release from incarceration, whichever is later, not the date of the offense. A fifteen-year-old conviction with a sentence that ended five years ago may still be inside the waiting period.
Sentence Completion and Restitution
You must have finished every part of your sentence before the clock starts. That means jail or prison, parole, probation, community service, and any other court-ordered condition. Someone still on probation does not qualify, no matter how long ago the conviction was.
Unpaid restitution can also block automatic sealing. In Pennsylvania, restitution owed on a case must be paid before convictions in that case can be sealed, though fines, fees, and court costs do not block sealing.4Community Legal Services of Philadelphia. Clean Slate 3.0 Frequently Asked Questions Utah requires all fines, fees, and restitution to be paid before automatic expungement. This is a quiet trap. People assume their record will clear on schedule and don’t realize an outstanding balance is holding it up indefinitely.
What Offenses Qualify and What’s Always Excluded
Clean Slate laws target lower-level, non-violent offenses. Most states cover misdemeanors broadly along with a narrow set of non-violent felonies such as certain drug possession or minor property crimes. Non-conviction records like dismissed charges and acquittals are typically eligible too, often on shorter timelines. New York is among the broadest, covering all misdemeanor and felony convictions except sex offenses and the top felony class.5Clean Slate NY. Frequently Asked Questions
Several categories are excluded under virtually every state’s law:
- Sex offenses, especially any crime requiring sex offender registration.
- Violent felonies, including homicide, aggravated assault, and robbery.
- Crimes against children and vulnerable adults, such as child endangerment, neglect of a care-dependent person, and corruption of minors.6City of Philadelphia. Convictions Impacting Sealing of PA Misdemeanors
- Human trafficking, in states that enumerate it, including Michigan.
- Impaired driving. DUI and DWI convictions are frequently excluded, and Minnesota specifically excludes second- through fourth-degree impaired driving.7Minnesota House of Representatives. What Is the Clean Slate Act and Who Is Eligible
One disqualifying conviction can also block otherwise eligible records on the same person’s history. In some states, a single serious felony prevents automatic clearance of your misdemeanors as well.
How “Automatic” Actually Works
The word automatic is doing a lot of work. State agencies use software to scan criminal history databases and flag records that meet the statutory criteria, and the process requires coordination across courts, prosecutors’ offices, and state criminal records repositories.8Code for America. Building Automatic Record Clearance Policies That Work
Automatic does not mean instant. New York’s Clean Slate law took effect in November 2024 but gave the court system up to three additional years to review and seal eligible records, so some qualifying records may not actually be sealed until November 2027.9Legal Action Center. Legal FAQs Other states have had similar rollout lags as agencies work through backlogs that can reach into the millions of records.
Because sealing happens without any required notice to you, the only way to know is to check. Request your own criminal history from the state agency that maintains it. Most states offer this through an online portal or a mail-in request, typically for a fee in the range of $10 to $25. You can also contact the sentencing court or the arresting agency about a specific case.
Sealing Is Not Expungement
Most Clean Slate laws seal records rather than expunge them, and the difference matters.
A sealed record still exists. It is removed from public background checks, so most employers, landlords, and schools will not see it. The record stays in government databases and remains accessible to law enforcement, courts, and often professional licensing boards.10Justia. Expungement and Sealing of Criminal Records A later arrest means prosecutors and judges will still see the sealed conviction when making charging and sentencing decisions.
Expungement, where it is available, treats the record as if the conviction never happened. The record is legally destroyed or removed from the database, and the person can generally deny the conviction ever occurred. Some Clean Slate laws provide automatic expungement for non-conviction records like dismissed charges while limiting conviction relief to sealing.
What a Sealed Record Still Doesn’t Fix
This is where Clean Slate creates the most dangerous false sense of security. Sealing removes a record from a standard background check. Several critical areas are untouched.
Immigration
For non-citizens, sealed or expunged records carry the same weight as unsealed ones in immigration proceedings. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services states that an expunged conviction does not remove the underlying conviction for immigration purposes, and a sealed drug conviction or crime involving moral turpitude can still support denial of naturalization, visa revocation, or deportation.11USCIS. Chapter 2 – Adjudicative Factors USCIS can also move to unseal a record. Anyone with immigration concerns should consult an immigration attorney before assuming a sealed record is behind them.
International Travel
The FBI shares criminal records data with some foreign governments. Canada can access U.S. criminal history at the border and may flag visitors with past convictions regardless of state-level sealing. A sealed state record does not guarantee the conviction has been removed from the federal databases used for border screening.
Firearms
Sealing does not restore gun rights lost to a felony conviction. Law enforcement retains access to sealed records and will consider them when processing firearms applications. In Pennsylvania, the only path to restoring gun rights after a disqualifying conviction is a governor’s pardon, not record sealing.4Community Legal Services of Philadelphia. Clean Slate 3.0 Frequently Asked Questions Someone who sees a record disappear from a public background check and then buys a firearm can pick up a new felony charge for it.
Professional Licensing
Licensing boards for nursing, law, medicine, education, and similar fields often run fingerprint-based background checks that reach both state and federal databases. Sealed records can still surface. Whether a specific board can view a sealed record depends on state law, federal law, and the board’s own policy, and even in states where the board cannot view the record directly, the federal fingerprint check may flag that a record exists.
If You Don’t Qualify Automatically
Automatic sealing covers only a slice of criminal records. If your offense is excluded or your state has not passed a Clean Slate law, other routes may still be open. Most states allow petition-based expungement or sealing for a wider range of offenses than the automatic process covers. Pennsylvania, for example, allows petition-based sealing of first-degree misdemeanors and third-degree felonies that do not qualify for its automatic process. The petition route means filing paperwork with the court, usually with a filing fee, and sometimes a hearing before a judge decides.
For the most serious excluded offenses, a governor’s pardon or executive clemency may be the only path to relief. Pardons are rare and typically require years of documented rehabilitation, but they offer the broadest form of relief, including the possibility of restoring firearm eligibility that sealing alone cannot touch.