Law & regulation · 8 November 2026 · 6 min read

Virginia’s Clean Slate law is now sealing records

Virginia’s sealing statute took effect in July. It changes what an employer may ask, what an application has to say, and what a background check is allowed to report.

By Marko Ivanov

Virginia’s Clean Slate sealing law took effect on 1 July 2026. The statute creates two routes to sealing — an automatic process run by the state and a petition process a person can file — and it adds a set of duties for employers and for the companies that furnish background reports. A report from WJLA on 6 November shows the law working in a Virginia courthouse, and the transparency argument that has followed it.

What the law does

Sealing is not expungement. The record still exists for government agencies that need it; what changes is public access. The Virginia State Crime Commission’s guidance says a sealed record held by the Central Criminal Records Exchange, a court, a law enforcement agency or the DMV can be shared publicly only for certain purposes, and that background check companies that collect criminal records are prohibited from sharing information about a sealed offense.

The automatic process covers several categories. Misdemeanor offenses that end in an acquittal or a dismissal with prejudice on or after 1 July 2026 are sealed when the case concludes, unless the defendant objects. Certain misdemeanor convictions — petit larceny, shoplifting, trespass, disorderly conduct, marijuana possession and others — are sealed after a seven-year period without another reportable conviction, subject to the statute’s conditions. The petition process covers most misdemeanors, Class 5 and 6 felonies, grand larceny and deferred dismissals, with a seven-year wait for misdemeanors and ten years for felonies, and a lifetime limit of two granted petitions.

The exclusions matter. Class 1 through 4 felonies, sex crimes, violent felonies, felonies involving a firearm, protective-order violations, hate crimes and several other categories are not eligible for petition sealing. A record that is excluded from the statute is still a record an employer can see.

What employers have to do

Code of Virginia §19.2-392.15 is the employer-facing provision. It says that covered employers and educational institutions shall not, in any application, interview or otherwise, require an applicant to disclose information about an arrest, charge or conviction that has been sealed. An applicant is entitled to leave sealed matters out of an answer.

If an application includes a question about a prior arrest, charge or conviction, the employer has to include — or otherwise provide — a notice telling the applicant that sealed information does not have to be disclosed. The notice is not required on applications for the categories excluded by the statute, which include certain law-enforcement employment, inquiries required by Virginia or federal law, and positions subject to federal access-control requirements.

A willful violation is a Class 1 misdemeanor for each violation. The statute does not make the notice optional paperwork; it is the mechanism that makes the no-disclosure right visible to the applicant.

What screening companies have to do

A sealed offense is not reportable in a routine background check. The Crime Commission’s guidance is explicit that background check companies that collect criminal records are prohibited from sharing sealed offense information. That is a product-level requirement, not only a policy statement: the search logic, the data sources and the report templates all have to reflect it.

The FCRA duties sit on top. A consumer reporting agency has to use reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy, and it has to handle disputes. A record that has been sealed but still appears in a county data feed is exactly the kind of inaccuracy those duties are meant to catch. The federal obligations do not disappear because a state has changed what the public record shows.

The transparency debate

WJLA’s report describes a sexual-assault case in which charges were dropped and the record was then sealed. The reporter could not find the case in the online court search or on the courthouse computer, and the clerk’s office said the record had been sealed on request after the charges were dropped. A victims’ advocacy group argues that the process lets a prosecutor’s mistakes or dropped cases disappear from public view; the Senate majority leader who helped pass the law told WJLA that the issue had been raised in the last 90 days and that he is looking at changing the law.

The employer duty is separate from that debate, but the two are connected. The purpose of sealing is to let a person put an old record behind them when applying for a job or housing. The controversy is about what the public loses when the same mechanism is used for a case that was dropped rather than resolved in the person’s favor. Employers do not have to resolve that policy question; they do have to follow the statute as it stands.

What to check now

Read the application. If it asks about criminal history, it needs the sealed-records notice. If the notice is buried in a background-check authorization rather than on the application, it is worth checking whether it meets the statutory requirement.
Train the people who interview. The prohibition covers an interview and “otherwise,” not just the form. A recruiter who asks about a sealed case has created the problem the form was supposed to avoid.
Check the vendor configuration. A screening product that still returns sealed Virginia records is not compliant with the state guidance, whatever the contract says. Ask for the suppression rule and the date it was tested.
Audit Virginia searches. Court data and commercial databases do not update at the same time. A sealed record can linger in a feed; the FCRA dispute process is the backstop, but the screening program should not be the first place the error is discovered.
Watch the next session. The prosecutor-sealing issue is live, and the law’s sponsor has said he is looking at changes. A policy that is correct today may need a revision if the sealing process changes.

What does not change

The FCRA sequence still applies to covered background reports: the standalone disclosure, the authorization, the pre-adverse action package and the adverse action notice. Other states still have their own sealing and fair chance rules, and a Virginia search is only one part of a national program. Sealing also does not erase the record for government or law enforcement purposes, and it does not reach records held by the federal government.

The practical change is narrower than “no record exists” and broader than “the record is private.” It is that a sealed Virginia offense is no longer a question an employer may require an applicant to answer, and no longer something a screening company may report in the ordinary course.

Sources

Published 8 November 2026. Nothing here is legal advice; see the terms of use.