New York's Clean Slate Act Takes Effect: Millions of Old Convictions Now Seal Automatically

New York's Clean Slate Act is now in force, and it changes what shows up on a routine employment background check for millions of people with old convictions. The law, signed by Governor Kathy Hochul on November 16, 2023 as Chapter 631 of the Laws of 2023, took effect exactly one year later, on November 16, 2024.

Information last verified on June 20, 2026.

The statute, codified at Criminal Procedure Law section 160.57, directs the state to seal eligible criminal conviction records automatically, without any petition or filing by the affected person. Sealed records are then hidden from most private employers and the general public, though several categories of users keep access. Below is what the law actually says, drawn from the enacted bill text, and what it means for anyone running or subject to a background check in New York.

What the Clean Slate Act does

The core change is automation. Before this law, a New Yorker who wanted an old conviction sealed generally had to file a motion and meet court requirements. Criminal Procedure Law section 160.57 instead requires the state to identify and seal qualifying records on its own.

The waiting periods are set by conviction level. For misdemeanors, the bill text requires that "at least three years have passed from the defendant's release from incarceration or the imposition of sentence." For felonies, it requires that "at least eight years have passed from the date the defendant was last released from incarceration for the sentence of the conviction."

Waiting time alone is not enough. The person must also have no subsequent criminal charge pending in the state, and must not currently be under the supervision of any probation or parole department for the conviction eligible for sealing. A new conviction during the waiting window resets eligibility.

These mechanics matter for anyone reading our background check laws by state guide because they determine what a New York record looks like years after a case closes.

Which convictions are excluded

The Act does not wipe out every record. The enacted text at section 160.57 carves out two major categories permanently.

First, sealing is unavailable where "the conviction is not for an offense defined as a sex offense" under section 168-a of the Correction Law. In plain terms, offenses that require sex-offender registration cannot be sealed.

Second, the law excludes most Class A felonies. The statute requires that "the conviction is not for a Class A felony offense" other than "Class A felony offenses defined in Article Two Hundred Twenty," which covers certain controlled-substance offenses. So the most serious felonies, such as Class A violent felonies, remain on the record indefinitely, while some Class A drug felonies can still seal after the eight-year window.

Who can still see a sealed record

Sealing is not the same as erasing. Section 160.57 keeps several users connected to the sealed file. According to the bill text, sealed records remain available to federal and state law enforcement agencies and to courts for the purposes of a pending criminal proceeding.

They also remain available to any entity "required by state law, federal law or regulation" to request and receive a fingerprint-based background check. That includes agencies vetting fitness for "the safety and well-being of children or adolescents, elderly individuals, individuals with disabilities," any "prospective employer of a police officer or peace officer," and "any federal, state or local officer or agency with responsibility for the issuance of licenses to possess a firearm."

The practical takeaway: a private employer running a standard name-based commercial background check generally will not see a sealed New York conviction, but a school, hospital, or law-enforcement agency running a legally mandated fingerprint check still can. This split is a common feature of record-relief laws nationwide, and it is one reason our state pages such as Ohio's background check rules emphasize that "sealed" rarely means "invisible to everyone."

Federal background-check rules still apply

State sealing law does not replace the federal framework that governs commercial background reports. The Fair Credit Reporting Act, 15 U.S.C. section 1681b, lists "employment purposes" as a permissible reason for a consumer reporting agency to furnish a report, and section 1681b(b) adds employer duties on top of it.

Before pulling a report, an employer must, under section 1681b(b)(2), make a clear and conspicuous written disclosure and obtain the applicant's written authorization. Before taking adverse action based on a report, section 1681b(b)(3) requires the employer to provide the applicant a copy of the report and a written description of the person's rights.

There is a second federal step after the report is used. Under 15 U.S.C. section 1681m, a user who takes an adverse action based in whole or in part on a consumer report must give the consumer notice of the adverse action, the name and contact information of the reporting agency that supplied the report, and a statement that the agency did not make the decision. The user must also tell the consumer of the right to dispute the accuracy or completeness of the information and to obtain a free copy of the report from the agency.

Those steps apply regardless of whether a state has sealed an underlying record. A New York applicant whose conviction is sealed should generally not see it surface on a compliant commercial report, but the federal disclosure-and-dispute machinery is what protects against inaccurate or stale data either way. Readers can compare how states layer their own rules on this federal floor in our Iowa background check overview.

How sealing differs from expungement

It is worth being precise about terminology, because it affects what a background check actually returns. New York's Clean Slate Act seals records under Criminal Procedure Law section 160.57; it does not destroy or expunge them. A sealed record continues to exist in the state's files and remains reachable by the specific users the statute lists, including the courts and law enforcement.

That distinction is different from a true expungement, where the underlying record is treated as if it never existed. Many states use the two words loosely, but the legal consequences differ. For a standard private employment screen, the practical result of New York's sealing is similar to expungement, because the conviction is removed from public and commercial view. For a fingerprint-based check required by law, the result is not similar at all, because the statute preserves access for those users.

Analysis: Why This Matters

New York is one of the most populous states to adopt automatic, no-petition sealing, and that scale is the story. The Recording Law Editorial Team views the shift from petition-based relief to automatic sealing as the single most consequential design choice in modern record-relief law. Research on earlier petition systems has repeatedly found that only a small fraction of eligible people ever apply, often because they do not know they qualify, cannot afford counsel, or cannot navigate the process. Automation removes that gap by default.

For employers, the change is operational, not just symbolic. A compliant commercial background screen in New York should increasingly come back "clean" for older, lower-level offenses, which narrows the universe of records that can lawfully drive a hiring decision. Employers in regulated fields that rely on fingerprint-based checks should not assume the law changed their access, because section 160.57 expressly preserves it.

For job seekers, the most important point is that automatic does not mean instantaneous or universal. Records can take time to process, exclusions are real, and the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act remains the tool for fixing a report that wrongly shows a sealed or inaccurate item. As of June 2026, the law has been in force for over a year, and its real-world effect depends heavily on how cleanly state systems execute the sealing at scale.