Clean slate expungement bill passes in Missouri

On May 15, the Missouri legislature gave bipartisan approval to a measure mandating automatic expungement of felony amd misdemeanor drug possession convictions, and convictions for unlawful use of drug paraphernalia. If SB 1421 is approved by the governor, felonies will be expunged after three years without a new conviction, and misdemeanors will be expunged after one year.  A person is limited to three misdemeanor and two felony expungements under the bill, combined with existing expungement laws.

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Federal expungement for survivors of human trafficking

Until this year, there was no federal law authorizing expungement or sealing of a federal conviction.  That changed on January 23, 2026, when President Trump signed into law the Trafficking Survivors Relief Act (TSRA), 18 U.S.C. § 3771A.  The TSRA authorizes courts to grant record relief in the form of vacatur and expungement to survivors of human trafficking arrested or convicted of a nonviolent federal crime as a direct result of their being a victim of trafficking, defined as sex or labor trafficking under 22 U.S.C. 7102.  Our research indicates that this is the first time in our Nation’s history that expungement of a conviction record has been explicitly authorized in federal law. The only federal authority for expungement before enactment of the TSRA was the extremely narrow provision in the so-called Federal First Offender Act, 18 U.S.C. § 3607(a), which allows a person who is arrested for misdemeanor drug possession under 21 U.S.C. § 844 to avoid a conviction by participating in a program of deferred adjudication, as long as they have no prior drug conviction.  Upon successful completion of the program, the charges are dismissed and no conviction results.  Expungement is available for the resulting non-conviction record, but only if the person was under 21 at the time of the offense. See § 3607(c).  Other than this one very limited authority, until the TRSA there was no authority in federal law to expunge or seal even acquittals and other non-conviction records.  See Section III of the Federal profile from the Restoration of Rights Project.

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Maine governor vetoes clean slate bill

On April 29, Maine governor Janet Mills vetoed a bill that would have authorized automatic sealing of many misdemeanor convictions after five conviction-free years, and made Maine the 14th state to adopt a “clean slate” record relief measure.  Efforts to override her veto failed, but supporters of the failed record relief bill vowed to bring it back in the next legislative session. Our recent annual report notes that Illinois became the 13th “clean slate” state when Governor Pritzker signed it into law in January.  The Illinois law’s provisions are explained in a post we published last fall. In support of her veto, Governor Mills’ letter cited the bill’s extension to domestic violence convictions, as well as recurring concerns held by opponents of automatic sealing: cost and constitutionality. There are several significant problems with the legislation. First, as drafted, L.D. 1911 would mandate the sealing of records for Class D domestic violence assault – a result that is plainly contrary to the public interest. Second, a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit strongly suggests that categorically sealing criminal records without conducting a case-by-case review of the circumstances violates the First Amendment. Third, this legislation would commit the State to hiring seven permanent employees to conduct the work of sealing records. Only a fraction of this cost has been appropriated. This is a significant on-going expense that could be avoided by allowing interested persons to request that their records be sealed, rather that requiring the Judicial Branch to seal all records eligible records as a matter of course. The bill’s supporters argued that the inclusion of domestic violence convictions was an acknowledged clerical error that would have been corrected in the implementation process, and that the governor’s other objections (cost and constitutionality) were overblown, and outweighed by the advantages for the many Maine citizens who stood to gain from the bill, which had been passed with bipartisan support.  They pointed out that the petition-based sealing process enacted in 2024 is rarely used, largely because of the difficulties faced by individuals navigating the judicial process.  The bill would have…

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Criminal record reforms continue to deliver in 2025

For almost a decade, at the beginning of each new year, CCRC has published a report describing and evaluating record reforms enacted in the previous year. Our reports have documented the steady progress of what we characterized six years ago as “a full-fledged law reform movement” aimed at restoring rights and status to individuals who have successfully navigated the criminal law system. Our 2025 report on newly enacted record reforms is a bit late this year due to technical difficulties with our website, but it shows that the steady progress of law reform has continued. In fact, 2025 was the most productive legislative year since 2020, measured in sheer numbers of new laws. Even Congress got into the record reform act in 2025, approving a bill to enact the very first federal expungement law, for survivors of human trafficking convicted of crime related to their trafficked status.  President Trump signed this bill into law in early 2026, and it is described in the Federal profile from the Restoration of Rights Project. (We expect to publish a comprehensive analysis of human trafficking record relief laws in coming weeks.) Our report for this year has a different format, aimed at highlighting what has been accomplished by the states.  While we recognize Alabama and Virginia as having enacted the most impressive slates of new laws in 2025, we commend several other states for noteworthy accomplishments. Additional details on specific reform measures mentioned in the report can be found in the relevant state profiles from CCRC’s Restoration of Rights Project. Having had an opportunity to preview what’s coming in 2026, we are excited to see that even in an election year there will be a continuing expansion of record clearing opportunities.  Two states have already enacted a broad regime of automatic sealing (Maine and Illinois), and bills making their way through the process reduce access barriers like lengthy waiting periods, outstanding court debt and application-related costs. We can already see efforts to improve records management to accommodate automation of record clearance.  Several states have enacted broad occupational licensing reforms, an area where bipartisan interest…

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CCRC is back in action!

After nearly six months offline because of repeated malware attacks, the Collateral Consequences Resource Center website is back live — entirely rebuilt and ready again to provide web-based legal resources to the public free of charge. We are especially happy to be able to reintroduce our flagship resource, the Restoration of Rights Project (RRP), which was hard hit by the malware attacks, mysteriously losing both data and functionality. Those who use and rely on the RRP know its value in collecting and analyzing laws in each state that aim to mitigate the adverse effects of a criminal record, through civil rights restoration, executive pardon, judicial record clearing, and fair chance employment and licensing. The RRP also includes 50-state comparison charts for each of these four areas of research. Our work on the RRP has been supported in recent years by generous grants from Arnold Ventures, and we have made a point of keeping its resources updated in real time as new laws are enacted. We have also published specialized research reports based on RRP research, most recently on loss and restoration of firearm rights, as well as annual reports on newly enacted laws. Reconstructing the RRP’s hundreds of web pages has been the work of many weeks for me and Beth Johnson, who for the past two years has been my right hand in keeping the RRP up to date and accurate. Fortunately, we have been able to restore almost all of the material that was lost or compromised, and we have taken the opportunity to add new laws and expand areas of current interest such as non-conviction dispositions and record relief for human trafficking survivors. Beth and I have had time to consider the importance of the RRP project, and to appreciate the work that goes into its upkeep. The fact is that maintaining the RRP has been a labor of love since I began it more than 20 years ago. It also requires a love of labor, because this is careful, detailed work, done behind the scenes, that can frequently be tedious and seem repetitious. We worry a…

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