Clean slate laws are state statutes that automatically seal or expunge certain criminal records after a defined waiting period — without requiring the record holder to file a petition, hire an attorney, or take any action at all. As of early 2025, more than a dozen states have enacted some form of automatic record relief, and the list is growing.
For public records researchers, investigators, journalists, and anyone conducting court records research, clean slate laws introduce a variable that didn’t exist a decade ago: records accessible last year may not be accessible today — without any visible indication why.
Quick Answer: Clean slate laws automatically seal or expunge qualifying criminal records after a waiting period — no petition required. Researchers searching court portals in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Utah, Colorado, Connecticut, and other clean-slate states may find gaps in records that previously appeared. The records still exist in law enforcement systems but are removed from public court portals, commercial aggregators, and any database derived from public court access. Knowing which states have these laws, which offenses qualify, and how to recognize a sealed record gap is now a required skill for anyone doing serious court records research.
A negative court search result in a clean slate state should be interpreted as incomplete data, not a confirmed absence of criminal history.
For researchers specifically: This is not about whether sealing is good policy. It is about understanding what your search results mean — and what they don’t mean — in a state with automatic relief.
⚠️ Legal Notice: This article covers public records research methods and state law affecting court record availability. It does not constitute legal advice. If you have questions about whether a specific record has been sealed or whether you qualify for relief under a specific state’s law, consult a licensed attorney in that jurisdiction.
Why This Guide Is Reliable
inet-investigation.com publishes research-based guides built on primary government sources and public records law. All state law citations link to primary statutory sources or official state government resources. This article will be updated as additional states enact clean slate legislation.
“A court search returning no results no longer means no history — it may mean no access to history.”
— inet-investigation.com
When Clean Slate Laws Matter Most
Before the mechanics, the use cases. Clean slate laws affect different researchers in different ways.
Employment background checks. HR teams and hiring managers conducting background checks in clean slate states may receive reports that appear clean for candidates who had qualifying prior convictions. FCRA-compliant consumer reporting agencies are generally required to exclude sealed records — but aggregator-based checks may still surface them during the lag period.
Tenant screening. Property managers using people-search aggregators to screen applicants may find outdated criminal history in states where clean slate has already removed those records from court portals. Acting on that data creates FCRA liability.
Journalism investigations. A reporter building a story around a subject’s criminal history may find gaps in court portal searches that reflect sealing rather than a clean record. Records publicly accessible when the investigation began may be sealed by the time the story is published.
OSINT identity verification. Investigators applying the 8-Phase OSINT Investigation Framework must account for clean slate jurisdiction gaps when assigning confidence levels to “no records found” results.
Historical investigations. Anyone researching a subject’s past in a clean slate state — due diligence, background research, academic research — may encounter gaps where records existed and have since been removed.
How Clean Slate Systems Work: The Conceptual Model
Understanding where sealing happens and why it leaves no trace is what makes the rest of this article useful.
Search returns conviction
Search returns nothing
Diagram: How criminal records move from court systems to public portals — and where clean slate sealing removes them from public access.
The Data Flow: Court to Portal to Aggregator
When a criminal case is filed, the record enters the court’s case management system. From there:
- The court case management system stores the full record — parties, charges, dispositions, documents.
- The public court portal exposes a searchable subset of that data online. This is what researchers find when searching a state court portal by name.
- Commercial aggregators periodically scrape or receive data exports from public court portals and incorporate that data into their databases. This is where BeenVerified, Spokeo, and Intelius get their criminal history data.
Where Sealing Happens
Automatic sealing does not happen at the aggregator layer. It happens at the source — the court’s case management system and the public portal.
When a state’s automated clean slate process runs:
- The qualifying record is flagged as restricted in the court system
- The public portal query returns nothing — no placeholder, no “record sealed” notice, no indication anything was removed
- The record remains in restricted systems, accessible to law enforcement but invisible to public searches
The result: A court portal search returns nothing — identical to what appears for a subject with no criminal history.
Why No Trace Exists
This is what distinguishes automatic sealing from petition-based expungement. When someone petitions for expungement, the petition is a court filing — a public record. The hearing produces a court order. The order is docketed. A researcher can find the expungement order even if they can’t access the underlying record it removed.
Automatic sealing produces none of this. There is no petition, no hearing, no order, no docket entry. The automated process runs — typically monthly or quarterly — and the qualifying records stop appearing in public searches. The only way to know a record existed is to have found it before the sealing process ran.
The Aggregator Lag Problem
Aggregators reflect court portal data with a delay — and that delay creates a specific and consequential problem for researchers.
Diagram: Court portals reflect clean slate sealing within days. Major aggregators lag 3–12 months. Smaller aggregators may never update.
In practice, this means an investigator may see evidence of a criminal record that is legally no longer a public record — a distinction that matters for both reporting accuracy and legal compliance.
This creates a specific researcher scenario: the court portal returns nothing, but an aggregator shows prior criminal history. Under the source hierarchy framework, the court portal is Tier 1. The aggregator is Tier 3. The conflict between them, in a clean slate state, is not a data error — it may be evidence of sealing.
What Clean Slate Laws Actually Do
| Law Type | What It Does | Public Visibility After |
|---|---|---|
| Automatic sealing | Removes from public portals; record preserved for law enforcement | No — removed from public access |
| Automatic expungement | Destroys or obliterates the record itself | No — record no longer exists |
| Petition-based expungement | Court-ordered relief after formal petition | No — but petition creates visible paper trail |
| Conviction vacation | Court overturns conviction | No — but vacation order is public |
| Deferred adjudication | No conviction entered if conditions met | Depends on state — sometimes never entered |
Source: National Inventory of Collateral Consequences of Conviction — niccc.csgjusticecenter.org
The clean slate distinction: Automatic relief happens with no petition, hearing, or court order that would appear in the public record. The record disappears from public view after the statutory waiting period. There is no index entry, no docket notation, no way to determine from a standard court search that a record once existed.
Why This Matters for Researchers
Before clean slate laws, a thorough state court records search would return all public criminal records for a given name. A result returning nothing reasonably meant no public criminal history existed in that jurisdiction.
That inference is no longer reliable in clean slate states.
A search returning no results in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Utah, or Colorado today might mean:
- The subject has no criminal history in that jurisdiction, or
- The subject has criminal history that has been automatically sealed
Those are two different conclusions — and from a standard court portal search, they look identical.
For investigators applying the verification framework from the 8-Phase OSINT Investigation Framework, this changes how confidence levels are assigned. A “no records found” result in a clean slate jurisdiction should be documented as: “No public records found; note that [state] has automatic sealing under [statute], which may affect completeness.”
For journalists, the implications are more complex. A story relying on a “clean” court record search in a clean slate state may be missing records that were publicly available months ago and have since been automatically sealed.
States With Automatic Record Relief: A Researcher’s Reference
Pennsylvania — Clean Slate Act (2018)
Statute: 18 Pa. C.S. § 9122.2
Covers:
- Misdemeanor convictions of the second and third degree after a 10-year clean period
- Summary convictions after 10 years
- Arrests not leading to conviction after 3 years
Excludes: Felony convictions · first-degree misdemeanors · sexual offenses · firearms offenses · offenses against minors
Mechanism: The Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts runs an automated process identifying qualifying records and sealing them from the Unified Judicial System public portal.
Researcher impact: Pennsylvania’s CPCMS portal may not return misdemeanor convictions older than 10 years, even when the subject is confirmed to have lived in Pennsylvania during that period. One of the most significant clean slate gaps given Pennsylvania’s large population and extensively indexed court records system.
Primary source: Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing Clean Slate information
Michigan — Clean Slate Act (2021)
Statute: MCL 780.621 et seq.
Covers:
- Most misdemeanor convictions after 7 years
- Most felony convictions after 10 years
- Automatically sets aside up to three felonies and unlimited misdemeanors meeting statutory criteria
Excludes: Life-eligible crimes · criminal sexual conduct · domestic violence offenses · OWI convictions · traffic offenses
Mechanism: Michigan’s automated expungement system runs quarterly. Qualifying records are set aside without any action by the record holder.
Researcher impact: One of the most expansive clean slate states. Multiple felony convictions publicly accessible as recently as 2022 may now be automatically set aside. A clean search of Michigan court records for a subject with a 10-year-old felony history may return nothing.
Primary source: Michigan Legislature — MCL 780.621
Utah — Clean Slate Act (2019)
Statute: Utah Code § 77-40a-301 et seq.
Covers:
- Class B and Class C misdemeanors and infractions after a defined waiting period
- Arrests without convictions after 30 days with no charges filed
Excludes: Class A misdemeanors · felonies · DUIs · offenses against children · domestic violence convictions
Mechanism: Utah’s Bureau of Criminal Identification runs the automated process. Qualifying records are expunged from the court system and BCI databases.
Researcher impact: More limited than Pennsylvania or Michigan — covers only lower-level misdemeanors and non-conviction records. Most significant for subjects with minor arrest records that would previously have appeared in aggregator profiles.
Primary source: Utah Courts — Expungement
Colorado — Clean Slate Act (2022)
Statute: C.R.S. § 24-72-702 et seq.
Covers:
- Civil infractions and petty offenses after 1 year
- Class 2 and 3 misdemeanors after 3 years
- Class 1 misdemeanors after 5 years
- Arrests without filing after 1 year
- Arrests with charges not resulting in conviction after 3 years
Excludes: Felony convictions · sexual offenses · crimes against children · domestic violence
Mechanism: Colorado courts are required to seal qualifying records automatically after the waiting period expires.
Researcher impact: Significant for non-conviction records. A subject arrested in Colorado and having charges dismissed will have that arrest automatically sealed after 3 years.
Primary source: Colorado Judicial Branch — Sealing Records
Connecticut (2023)
Statute: Conn. Gen. Stat. § 54-142t
Covers:
- Most misdemeanor convictions after 7 years
- Most Class D and E felonies after 10 years
- Non-conviction records after various periods
Excludes: Class A, B, and C felonies · violent offenses · sex offenses · offenses involving minors
Mechanism: The Connecticut Judicial Branch automated clean slate process. Connecticut uses the term “erasure.”
Primary source: Connecticut Judicial Branch — Clean Slate
Delaware (2022)
Statute: 11 Del. C. § 4374
Covers:
- Certain misdemeanor convictions after 3 years
- Certain felony convictions after 7 years
- Arrests not resulting in conviction after various periods
Excludes: Violent felonies · sex offenses · crimes involving children
Primary source: Delaware Courts — Expungement
New Jersey — Marijuana Convictions (2021)
Statute: N.J.S.A. 2C:52-5.3
Covers: Marijuana and hashish offenses decriminalized or legalized under the 2021 Cannabis Regulatory, Enforcement Assistance, and Marketplace Modernization Act. Currently limited to marijuana-related offenses.
Primary source: New Jersey Courts — Marijuana Expungement
Virginia — Marijuana Convictions (2021)
Statute: Va. Code § 19.2-392.2:1
Covers: Simple marijuana possession convictions automatically expunged following legalization. Limited to marijuana possession.
Illinois (2019 + Ongoing)
Statutes: 410 ILCS 705/10-10 (cannabis); 20 ILCS 2630/5.2 (broader automatic expungement)
Covers: Cannabis convictions under the Cannabis Regulation and Tax Act, plus automatic expungement for certain arrests and minor convictions through the Criminal Identification Act.
Primary source: Illinois State Police — Expungement
States With Pending or Recently Enacted Legislation
- Oklahoma (2023): Automatic expungement for certain non-violent misdemeanors and felonies. Implementation ongoing.
- Minnesota (2023): Expanded automatic expungement enacted, phased implementation.
- New Hampshire (2024): Automatic annulment for certain misdemeanors and felonies enacted.
- California: Pen. Code § 1203.4 automatically dismisses certain convictions after probation — not technically clean slate but produces similar researcher impact.
This section will be updated as implementation dates and additional state legislation are confirmed.
What Does Not Get Automatically Sealed
In virtually every clean slate state, the following are excluded — this is where court searches remain fully reliable:
- Violent felonies — assault, robbery, weapons offenses, homicide-related charges
- Sex offenses — particularly offenses requiring sex offender registration
- Offenses involving minors — child abuse, exploitation
- Domestic violence convictions — explicitly excluded due to federal firearms restrictions
- DUI and serious traffic offenses — excluded in most states
- Felonies above severity thresholds — each state draws the line differently
- Recent convictions — waiting periods of 7–10 years for felonies, 3–7 years for misdemeanors must elapse
For researchers: Clean slate laws primarily affect the lower end of the offense spectrum. Serious violent felonies, sex offenses, and recent convictions are largely unaffected.
How to Research in Clean Slate States: Step-by-Step Workflow
This is the procedural adjustment the OSINT investigation workflow requires when research involves clean slate jurisdictions.
Step 1 — Map all jurisdictions the subject has lived or worked in.
Before searching any court portal, confirm which states are in scope. Use property records, court filings, people-search aggregators, and employment history to build a complete list.
Step 2 — Check each jurisdiction’s clean slate status.
For every state on the list, determine whether automatic relief is in effect. Use the state reference section above or the Collateral Consequences Resource Center 50-state survey. Note the offense categories covered and the applicable waiting periods.
Step 3 — Adjust expectations for court portal searches.
In clean slate states, a negative court portal result means “no publicly accessible records found” — not “no criminal history.” In non-clean-slate states, a negative result carries more inferential weight. Document the distinction in research notes.
Step 4 — Cross-check aggregators — and understand the lag.
If an aggregator shows prior criminal history in a state where the court portal shows nothing, you may be seeing a sealed record the aggregator hasn’t yet removed. Treat as a lead requiring further investigation — not a confirmed finding to cite.
Step 5 — Search federal records regardless of state sealing.
State clean slate laws have no effect on PACER. Search PACER for federal criminal cases, civil litigation, and bankruptcy filings. Federal records are fully accessible regardless of what’s been sealed at the state level.
Step 6 — Check what’s excluded from sealing in each state.
For offenses in the excluded categories — violent felonies, sex offenses, recent convictions — court portals should still return records.
Step 7 — Document the limitations explicitly.
Every court records search in a clean slate jurisdiction must include scope documentation noting the applicable statute and its effect on completeness. See documentation standard below.
Tools and Data Sources Affected by Clean Slate Laws
Court Portals — Affected First
| State | Portal | Clean Slate Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Pennsylvania | Unified Judicial System — CPCMS | Qualifying misdemeanors sealed after 10 years |
| Michigan | Michigan Courts — Case Search | Qualifying felonies and misdemeanors set aside |
| Colorado | Colorado Courts — Case Search | Qualifying misdemeanors and non-conviction records sealed |
| Connecticut | Connecticut Judicial Branch | Qualifying misdemeanors and lower felonies erased |
| Utah | Utah Court Case Search | Qualifying Class B/C misdemeanors expunged |
Federal Courts — Not Affected
PACER covers all federal district, bankruptcy, and appellate courts. State clean slate laws have no effect on federal records.
Commercial Aggregators — Affected with Lag
| Aggregator | Typical Update Lag | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| BeenVerified | 3–6 months | Periodic database refreshes |
| Spokeo | 3–12 months | Variable by state and data source |
| Intelius | 3–12 months | May retain sealed records longer |
| TruePeopleSearch | 1–6 months | Generally faster than others |
| Smaller aggregators | 1–3+ years | May never remove sealed records |
State Criminal History Repositories — Partially Affected
State Bureaus of Investigation and Departments of Public Safety maintain criminal history databases separate from court portals. Clean slate laws typically apply to these repositories as well — but implementation timing may differ from the court portal.
NSOPW — Not Affected
Sex offender registration requirements exist independently of court records. Clean slate laws universally exclude sex offenses, and NSOPW registrations are not removed by sealing.
How to Recognize That a Record May Have Been Sealed
Automatically sealed records leave no visible trace — but several indicators help researchers assess whether a gap might reflect sealing rather than a clean history.
Quick Recognition Checklist
- [ ] Subject has confirmed addresses in a clean slate state (PA, MI, UT, CO, CT, DE)
- [ ] Record gap falls in the misdemeanor or lower-felony range — not serious violent offenses
- [ ] Timeline aligns with a waiting period — last known disqualifying event was 7–10 years ago
- [ ] Aggregator shows prior criminal history but the court portal shows nothing for the same period
- [ ] No visible petition-based expungement filing exists that would explain the gap
- [ ] Subject was employed in a field requiring a clean record during the period when prior history is suggested
⚠️ Important: None of these indicators confirm sealing. A subject with no prior criminal history looks identical in a court search to a subject with automatically sealed history. These indicators raise the question — they don’t answer it.
The Researcher’s Documentation Standard
When conducting court records research in clean slate jurisdictions, professional documentation must note the limitation. This applies directly to the scope documentation section of any OSINT report.
Standard scope language:
“Court records searched in [state] via [portal] on [date]. [State] has automatic [sealing/expungement] under [statute] for qualifying [misdemeanor/felony] convictions after [waiting period]. This search reflects publicly available court records as of the search date and may not include records automatically sealed prior to that date. A negative result in this jurisdiction cannot be interpreted as confirmation of no prior criminal history.”
This language documents the scope, notes the applicable statute, makes the limitation explicit, and prevents a negative result from being presented as a confirmed clean record.
Common Research Mistakes in Clean Slate States
Treating “no results” as a confirmed clean record. The most consequential error. In a clean slate state, a negative court portal result means “nothing publicly accessible found” — not “no criminal history.”
Citing aggregator data without checking the court portal. An aggregator showing criminal history in a clean slate state may be showing data that has already been sealed. Always verify against the current court portal. A conflict between an aggregator result and an empty court portal is resolved in favor of the court portal — it is the Tier 1 government source.
Ignoring waiting periods. A subject with a 6-year-old misdemeanor conviction in Pennsylvania hasn’t yet reached the 10-year threshold — that record is still publicly accessible. Misapplying waiting periods leads to false expectations about what will and won’t appear.
Not documenting the limitation in the report. Failure to note a search was conducted in a clean slate jurisdiction implies completeness that doesn’t exist. Any investigation report relying on court records research in a clean slate state must include explicit scope language.
Assuming sealing affects all record types. Civil court records, property records, business registrations, and professional licensing records are not affected by clean slate laws.
Assuming PACER reflects state sealing. PACER is a federal system. State clean slate laws have no effect on federal court records.
Using sealed aggregator data for adverse decisions. The FTC’s Using Consumer Reports: What Employers Need to Know states that consumer reports must reflect legally available information. A sealed record is no longer legally available to the general public. Using aggregator data showing a sealed record for an employment or housing decision creates FCRA liability.
Source: FTC — Using Consumer Reports: What Employers Need to Know
What Has Not Changed
Federal criminal records are unaffected. PACER remains fully accessible regardless of any state clean slate law.
Civil court records are unaffected. Lawsuits, judgments, restraining orders, and bankruptcy filings are outside the scope of clean slate legislation entirely.
Property, business, and licensing records are unaffected.
Sex offender registries are unaffected. Excluded universally from clean slate coverage.
Records in non-clean-slate states are unaffected. A conviction in Ohio remains fully public regardless of what has been sealed elsewhere.
Frequently Asked Questions
If a record is sealed, does it still exist somewhere?
Yes. Sealing removes a record from public portals but preserves it in law enforcement databases, accessible to law enforcement agencies, courts in subsequent proceedings, and certain licensed entities for specific authorized purposes.
Can journalists use sealed records?
Legally unsettled in most states. Records sealed before a journalist accessed them are in a different legal position than records obtained through lawful access before sealing occurred. This requires jurisdiction-specific legal counsel.
Will PACER show if a state record was sealed?
No. PACER covers federal courts only. State court sealing has no effect on PACER.
Does automatic sealing affect employer background checks?
For checks conducted through FCRA-compliant consumer reporting agencies, sealed records are generally required to be excluded. FBI fingerprint-based checks for specific occupations may return sealed records in some circumstances — this varies by state law and the purpose of the check.
How frequently is this guide updated?
This article is reviewed quarterly as additional states enact clean slate legislation, as implementation status changes, and as case law develops. Significant pending changes to watch: New Hampshire’s 2024 legislation implementation, Minnesota’s phased rollout, and any federal clean slate legislation.
Tracking Clean Slate Developments
Collateral Consequences Resource Center — ccresourcecenter.org — comprehensive 50-state survey, updated regularly.
Clean Slate Initiative — cleanslateinitiative.org — tracks state legislation in real time.
National Inventory of Collateral Consequences of Conviction — niccc.csgjusticecenter.org — primary source for state-by-state relief law.
Final Thoughts
Clean slate laws represent a significant shift in the public records landscape — one that has happened gradually, without much attention from the research community. The mental model that “no results = no history” in a court portal search needs updating for anyone working in clean slate jurisdictions.
The records landscape is not static. State legislatures are actively expanding automatic relief. More states are likely to enact clean slate legislation in the coming years.
The practical response is straightforward: know which states have automatic relief, apply the research workflow above, document the limitation when it applies, and never treat a negative court records result in a clean slate jurisdiction as equivalent to a confirmed clean history.
A gap may be absence of history — or it may be absence of access to history that exists. Those are not the same thing, and the difference matters.
Related Guides
- How Court Records Work
- How to Search State Court Records
- OSINT Workflow: The 8-Phase Investigation Framework
- How to Verify Information Using OSINT
- How to Build an OSINT Report
- What Are Public Records?
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. State laws change — verify current law in your jurisdiction before relying on this information for any legal purpose. Consult a licensed attorney for questions about specific records or eligibility for relief.