Expungement, Record Sealing, and Restoring Rights After a Conviction

Summary. This article explains the difference between expungement, sealing, set aside, and certificates of relief; how automatic clean slate laws are changing the field; what relief exists for arrests without charges; what the FCRA limits and how to dispute a report; what expungement does and does not do for firearms, voting, licensing, and immigration; and how federal relief is narrower than state relief.

There are, by most estimates, more Americans with a criminal record than with a four-year college degree. The record is created in a moment and lasts indefinitely, and its consequences are mostly not imposed by any judge. They are imposed by a landlord reading a screening report, a hiring manager running a background check, a licensing board applying a "good moral character" standard, a school, a bank, a bonding company, and an immigration officer — each acting on a database entry generated by an arrest that may never have led to a charge.

The law's response is a patchwork of remedies with confusingly similar names and materially different effects. Understanding which one you have, and what it actually does, is the whole subject.

Part I: The vocabulary, and why it matters

Expungement. In its strongest form, the record is destroyed or physically removed, and the person may lawfully deny the arrest or conviction ever occurred, including under oath in most contexts. In practice, few states destroy anything. Most "expungement" statutes seal the record from public view while preserving it for law enforcement, courts, and specified agencies.

Sealing. The record continues to exist but is removed from public access. It remains available to law enforcement, courts, some licensing bodies, and often to specified employers — schools, law enforcement agencies, and positions involving vulnerable people.

Set aside / vacatur. The conviction is annulled or the plea withdrawn and the case dismissed, though the record of the proceeding may remain. Several states use "set aside" for the relief that follows successful completion of probation.

Certificate of rehabilitation / certificate of relief from disabilities. The conviction remains fully public, but the certificate lifts specified legal barriers — most commonly occupational licensing bars — and provides evidence of rehabilitation. In several states it also creates a presumption of due care protecting employers from negligent hiring liability, which is what makes it practically valuable.

Pardon. An act of executive clemency by a governor or the President. It forgives the offense and may restore rights; it does not usually erase the record, though some states provide for expungement following a pardon.

Deferred adjudication / diversion. Not relief after the fact but a disposition that avoids a conviction in the first place — charges dismissed after a compliance period. This is nearly always the best available outcome and it is why record relief should be discussed at the plea stage, not years later.

Automatic sealing ("clean slate"). A rapidly spreading category: statutes that seal eligible records automatically, by operation of law and without a petition, after a waiting period. This is the most important development in the field, because petition-based systems are used by a very small fraction of eligible people — the paperwork, the filing fees, and the need for a lawyer being the barriers.

Part II: Non-conviction records — the most overlooked relief

A very large share of criminal records reflect no conviction at all: arrests without charges, charges dismissed, cases resolved by acquittal or nolle prosequi, and diversion completions.

These records persist anyway. The arrest is entered in state and federal databases at booking and does not disappear when the case ends. Background check companies scrape court dockets and aggregate arrest data, and a dismissed case appears in a screening report as an entry with a charge and no clear outcome.

Relief is usually available and usually easier:

Many states seal non-conviction records automatically, or on petition with no waiting period and no filing fee.
Acquittals and dismissals are the most commonly eligible category everywhere.
Arrests with no charge filed are frequently sealable after a short period.
Diversion completions are typically eligible, though some statutes require the petition to be filed and do not do it automatically.

Two practical points. First, sealing the court record does not automatically correct what the private background check companies have already collected — that requires separate FCRA dispute letters (Part VII). Second, the fingerprint record at the state repository and the FBI is a distinct record from the court file, and an order sealing one does not necessarily reach the other. Ask what the order covers, and follow up with each repository.

Part III: Eligibility — the recurring architecture

State statutes differ enormously, but they are built from the same components.

Offense category. Most statutes exclude some offenses categorically. The common exclusions: violent felonies, sex offenses requiring registration, offenses against children, and — surprisingly often — DUI, which many states exclude entirely.

Waiting period, running from conviction, from completion of the sentence, or from completion of probation and payment of all financial obligations. Typical ranges: one to three years for misdemeanors, three to ten for felonies, and longer for serious offenses.

Conviction-free period. No new offenses during the waiting period, and often no pending charges at the time of filing.

Completion of the sentence, including probation, parole, community service, treatment, and — the barrier that stops the most people — payment of all fines, fees, restitution, and court costs. In many states an outstanding balance is an absolute bar regardless of ability to pay, which converts record relief into a wealth-conditioned benefit.

Number of convictions. Many statutes limit relief to a single conviction, or to a defined number, or bar relief where there is any felony.

Discretion. Many petitions require the court to find that relief is consistent with the public interest, considering the offense, the time elapsed, the petitioner's conduct since, and any objection by the prosecutor or a victim.

Part IV: What relief does not do

This is where expectations most often diverge from reality, and where careless advice does real harm.

It rarely destroys anything. Most orders seal rather than destroy, and the record remains accessible to law enforcement, courts, and specified agencies.

It does not reach private databases automatically. Commercial background check companies purchased the data before the order issued, and they have no automatic obligation to learn about it. Sending them the order is a separate step (Part VII).

It does not necessarily restore firearm rights. Federal law prohibits possession by a person convicted of a felony or of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence. 18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(20) provides that a conviction for which a person "has been pardoned or has had civil rights restored" is not a conviction for these purposes — unless the pardon, expungement, or restoration expressly provides that the person may not ship, transport, possess, or receive firearms. So the effect of a state expungement on federal firearm disability turns on the precise text of the state's restoration provision. 18 U.S.C. § 925(c) provides a federal relief-from-disabilities application, but Congress has for many years withheld funding to process applications from individuals. This is a question for counsel, not for assumption.

It does not erase immigration consequences. For federal immigration purposes, a state expungement or vacatur entered solely for rehabilitative purposes or to avoid immigration consequences generally does not eliminate the conviction. A vacatur granted because of a substantive or procedural defect in the underlying proceeding — ineffective assistance of counsel under Padilla, for example — is treated differently. This distinction is decisive and it is the single most consequential misunderstanding in the area: a non-citizen who obtains a rehabilitative expungement and believes the conviction is gone may be deported anyway.

It does not always reach licensing boards. Many boards may consider sealed records by statute, and "good moral character" inquiries frequently ask about arrests and dismissed charges regardless of sealing.

It does not undo everything else. Sex offender registration, immigration status, professional discipline already imposed, and a driving record's separate lookback period are each governed by their own rules.

Part V: Collateral consequences — what the record actually costs

There are, by the count of the national inventory maintained for this purpose, tens of thousands of statutory and regulatory collateral consequences across federal and state law. The recurring categories:

Employment. Legal barriers are only part of it; the larger part is private decisionmaking. Ban-the-box laws in most states and many cities delay the criminal history inquiry until after a conditional offer, and fair chance laws require an individualized assessment considering the nature of the offense, the time elapsed, and its relationship to the job. The EEOC's position, grounded in 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2, is that a blanket exclusion based on criminal history can produce unlawful disparate impact absent job-relatedness and business necessity.

Occupational licensing. Roughly a quarter of American jobs require a license, and licensing statutes have historically barred applicants with records through "good moral character" standards. A substantial reform wave has narrowed this: many states now require a direct relationship between the offense and the license, prohibit vague character standards standing alone, and provide a preliminary determination process letting a person find out before investing in training whether their record disqualifies them.

Housing. Screening reports drive most denials. See Residential Landlord-Tenant Law and Fair Housing and Lending Discrimination; blanket criminal exclusions raise disparate impact exposure.

Voting. Every state but a handful restores the vote at some point, and the trend is strongly toward restoration upon release from incarceration. In several states restoration is conditioned on payment of outstanding legal financial obligations, which has generated significant litigation.

Firearms, discussed above.

Public benefits, education, and family law. Restrictions on SNAP and TANF for certain drug convictions (which most states have modified or opted out of), federal student aid consequences (substantially narrowed in recent years), public housing eligibility, adoption and foster care licensing, and consideration in custody proceedings.

Immigration, which is the most severe consequence available and which operates on its own definitions of "conviction," "aggravated felony," and "crime involving moral turpitude" that do not track state labels.

Part VI: Federal records

Federal relief is dramatically narrower than state relief, and this surprises people.

There is no general federal expungement statute. Courts have inherent authority to expunge in extremely limited circumstances — principally where the arrest or conviction was itself unlawful — and most circuits have held there is no ancillary jurisdiction to expunge a valid conviction for equitable reasons.

The one statutory route is 18 U.S.C. § 3607, which provides special probation for a first-offense simple possession of a controlled substance, dismissal on successful completion, and — if the person was under 21 at the time of the offense — expungement of all official records. It is narrow and it is the exception that proves the rule.

Presidential pardon is the general federal remedy. It is discretionary, administered through the Office of the Pardon Attorney, requires (by regulation) a waiting period of several years after completion of sentence, and has a low grant rate. A pardon does not expunge the record.

Federal firearm relief under 18 U.S.C. § 925(c) exists on paper but has been unfunded as to individuals for decades.

Practical consequence: a person with a federal conviction generally cannot clear it, and should focus on a certificate-type remedy where the state offers one for state purposes, on the FCRA dispute process, and on the individualized-assessment protections in employment and licensing law.

Part VII: The background check problem

A sealed record is only as sealed as the databases say it is, and the private screening industry is where most of the harm now occurs.

The FCRA framework. Consumer reporting agencies preparing background checks are subject to the Fair Credit Reporting Act. 15 U.S.C. § 1681c limits what may be reported:

Arrests that did not result in conviction may not be reported after seven years, along with several other adverse items subject to the same limit.
Convictions may be reported indefinitely under federal law — but a number of states impose a seven-year limit of their own, and where they do, state law governs.
The seven-year restrictions do not apply where the position's annual salary is expected to equal or exceed a statutory threshold, an exception that swallows a good deal of the rule for higher-paying jobs.

Accuracy and disputes. A consumer reporting agency must follow reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy, and on a dispute must conduct a reasonable reinvestigation, typically within 30 days, and delete or correct information that is inaccurate, incomplete, or unverifiable.

The recurring inaccuracies, in order of frequency: a case reported as pending or convicted when it was dismissed; a sealed or expunged record still appearing; mismatched identity on a common name; a single arrest reported as multiple offenses across multiple databases; a charge reported at its original level rather than as reduced; and a juvenile record that should never have been reported at all.

Adverse action rights. Before taking adverse action based on a report, an employer must provide a pre-adverse action notice with a copy of the report and a summary of rights, allow a reasonable time to respond, and then send a final adverse action notice. This window is the practical opportunity to correct an error before the job is lost, and most people do not know they have it.

The dispute sequence that works: obtain the report; obtain certified court dispositions; dispute in writing with each reporting agency, attaching the certified records and any sealing order; dispute simultaneously with the furnisher; keep everything; and if the error persists after a reinvestigation, the FCRA provides a private right of action with actual damages, statutory damages for willful violations, and attorney's fees.

Part VIII: Clean slate, and why automatic beats petition

The most important thing that has happened in this field is not a new form of relief. It is the discovery that the old form did not work.

The uptake problem. Where relief is available only by petition, the share of eligible people who obtain it is very small — studies of state systems have found single-digit percentages. The reasons are mundane and cumulative: people do not know they are eligible; they cannot obtain their own record; the petition requires a certified disposition from every county; there is a filing fee; the form is not obvious; a hearing may require missing work; and the whole process is easier with a lawyer that most eligible people cannot afford. A remedy used by five percent of the people it was written for is a remedy in name.

What clean slate laws do. They direct the state to identify eligible records by data match and seal them automatically, without any petition, after the waiting period runs. The eligibility criteria are typically narrower than the petition route — often limited to non-convictions, misdemeanors, and lower-level felonies, with the same exclusions for violent and sex offenses — but the coverage is universal within those categories.

The friction that remains. Automatic sealing reaches the state's records. It does not reach the FBI's, it does not reach the arresting agency's local files in every state, and above all it does not reach the commercial databases that private screeners already purchased. A person whose record was automatically sealed can still be denied a job on a background report drawn from data collected in 2019. The FCRA dispute process in Part VII is therefore not an alternative to clean slate; it is the necessary second half of it.

What to do if you live in a clean slate state. Run a background check on yourself after the waiting period has passed. If a record that should have been sealed still appears, there is usually a correction or verification process at the state repository — and if the state record is clean and a commercial report is not, that is an FCRA dispute, not a court matter.

Part IX: Sequencing multiple cases across counties

Most people seeking relief have more than one case, and the cases are rarely in one place. The order of operations matters.

First, build the complete list. A state criminal history report is the starting point, but it is frequently incomplete — cases resolved before digitization, cases in municipal courts that do not report, and cases in other states. Add an FBI identity history summary if there is any chance of out-of-state or federal history, and search court dockets by name in every county you have lived in.

Second, get a certified disposition for each. Not a printout — a certified copy from the clerk. This is the document that will be attached to every petition and every FCRA dispute, and obtaining it takes weeks by mail.

Third, analyze each case separately. Eligibility is per case, and the answer can differ across cases in the same file: one dismissed charge sealable immediately, one misdemeanor eligible in two years, one felony excluded categorically.

Fourth, understand how the cases interact. Many statutes count all convictions in determining eligibility for any of them, and several impose a lifetime limit on the number of records that may be cleared. This creates a real strategic question: if you may only clear one, clear the one that is actually blocking you — which is usually the most recent, or the one in the category the licensing board asks about, not necessarily the most serious.

Fifth, deal with money before filing. Outstanding fines, fees, restitution, and court costs are an absolute bar in many states. Ask about a waiver based on indigency, a payment plan, a conversion to community service, or a statutory ability-to-pay determination. Courts grant these routinely and almost nobody asks.

Sixth, file in each county, and calendar the response deadlines. A prosecutor's objection in one county does not affect the others.

Part X: Presenting the petition where the court has discretion

Where the statute makes relief discretionary — asking whether it is consistent with the public interest — the petition becomes a persuasive document rather than a form, and the difference in outcomes is substantial.

What to include:

The passage of time, stated concretely. Not "many years ago" but "the offense occurred on 3 May 2014, eleven years and four months ago, when the petitioner was nineteen."
What has happened since, in specifics: employment history with dates, education completed, treatment completed, military service, caregiving responsibilities, community involvement.
The concrete obstacle. Courts respond to a specific, documented barrier far better than to a general desire for a clean record: a denied license application with the denial letter attached; a job offer withdrawn with the adverse action notice attached; a housing denial; an inability to chaperone a child's field trip.
Compliance evidence: proof that probation was completed, that all financial obligations are satisfied, and that there have been no new offenses — a current criminal history printout showing nothing since.
Letters from employers, supervisors, treatment providers, clergy, and community members. Specific and dated, describing conduct observed, not adjectives.
Acknowledgment. A short, non-defensive paragraph in the petitioner's own words. Judges are deciding whether the person is the same person who committed the offense, and minimizing it is the surest way to answer that question badly.

What to expect from the prosecution. Many statutes require notice to the prosecutor and to any victim, and either may object. An objection is not fatal; it converts a paper matter into a hearing. Where a victim may be notified, the petitioner should be told in advance, because for some people that consequence outweighs the benefit of filing.

And a word about honesty. A petition that omits a case the court will find, or that describes the offense in terms the file contradicts, does more damage than the record ever did. The court has the file.

Part X-A: Juvenile records, which are not as sealed as people assume

Nearly everyone believes a juvenile record disappears at eighteen. Nearly everyone is wrong, and the belief causes real harm because it produces answers on applications that turn out to be false.

What is actually true. Juvenile proceedings are typically confidential rather than public, and many states seal or expunge juvenile records — but the mechanism varies: some do it automatically at a stated age, most require a petition, and some do neither for enumerated serious offenses. Confidentiality is not the same as nonexistence, and the record is routinely available to law enforcement, courts, schools in some circumstances, the military, and specified licensing bodies.

Where juvenile records surface anyway:

Military enlistment, where applicants are required to disclose sealed and expunged juvenile matters and a waiver process applies.
Federal employment and security clearances, where the questionnaire reaches sealed records expressly.
Licensing boards with statutory access.
Sex offense registration, which in a number of states applies to juvenile adjudications, sometimes for life.
Immigration, where a juvenile delinquency adjudication is generally not a "conviction," but where conduct-based grounds — drug trafficking, admitted acts — can still cause serious consequences.
Commercial background databases, which sometimes acquire juvenile data they should not have and report it. This is an FCRA violation and a dispute, not a court matter.
Adult sentencing, where prior juvenile adjudications frequently count in criminal history scoring.

Transfer to adult court is the sharpest line. A young person prosecuted as an adult has an adult conviction, with all the ordinary consequences, and the juvenile confidentiality rules do not apply at all.

The practical instruction for a young adult: request your juvenile record rather than assuming it is gone; find out whether your state seals automatically or requires a petition, and file if it requires one; and before answering any question about criminal history, read what the specific application actually asks, because a form that asks about "sealed or expunged juvenile matters" means it.

Part X-B: The other post-conviction remedies, briefly

Record relief assumes the conviction was valid. Where it was not, the remedy is different and usually better — and the two are frequently confused.

Direct appeal challenges legal error in the trial court, on the record, within a short deadline after judgment.

Post-conviction relief (state habeas, coram nobis, a state PCR petition) reaches matters outside the record: ineffective assistance of counsel, newly discovered evidence, a Brady violation, an involuntary plea, or a constitutional defect. Deadlines are firm and frequently one to two years.

Vacatur for a defective plea advisement is the one that matters most for non-citizens. Under the Sixth Amendment as construed in Padilla v. Kentucky, counsel must advise a client of the immigration consequences of a plea, and a plea entered without that advice may be vacated for a substantive or procedural defect — which, unlike a rehabilitative expungement, does eliminate the conviction for immigration purposes. The distinction is the difference between relief that works and relief that does not.

Vacatur for trafficking or coercion victims. A growing number of states permit vacating convictions — commonly prostitution and related offenses — where the conduct resulted from being a victim of human trafficking, often with no waiting period and sometimes with no statute of limitations.

Actual innocence proceedings, with their own standards and, in most states, a compensation statute for the wrongly convicted.

Executive clemency — pardon or commutation — as the last resort where no judicial remedy exists.

The sequencing point. If there is any viable ground to attack the conviction itself, pursue that before or instead of a rehabilitative expungement, particularly where immigration is in play. An expungement obtained first can complicate a later challenge, and it does not deliver what a vacatur would.

Part X-C: Three people, three different answers

The dismissed charge that never went away. Renata was arrested in 2018 on a charge dismissed six weeks later. She has never been convicted of anything. In 2025 she is denied an apartment; the screening report shows the 2018 arrest with a charge and a blank disposition field.

What she needs is not expungement of a conviction — there is none. It is (a) a petition to seal the non-conviction record, which in her state has no waiting period and no filing fee; and (b) an FCRA dispute with the screening company, attaching the certified disposition showing dismissal. The second step is the one that fixes the apartment problem, and it is the step almost nobody takes because they assume the court order does it.

The licensing bar that a certificate solved. Malik has a nine-year-old felony theft conviction. He completed a two-year respiratory therapy program before discovering that the licensing board's "good moral character" provision was a problem. His state excludes his offense from expungement.

What worked was a certificate of relief from disabilities, which lifts the specific licensing bar and, in his state, creates a presumption of due care protecting an employer from negligent hiring liability. The conviction remains fully public. He is licensed and employed. The lesson is that the strongest-sounding remedy is not always the useful one — and that a preliminary determination from the board, available in a growing number of states, would have told him about the barrier before he spent two years and tuition.

The expungement that caused a deportation. Tomás, a lawful permanent resident, pleaded guilty in 2016 to an offense his lawyer described as minor. In 2023 a state court granted a rehabilitative expungement, and he was told the conviction was "gone." In 2025 he was placed in removal proceedings.

What went wrong. For immigration purposes, a state expungement or vacatur entered solely for rehabilitative purposes does not eliminate the conviction. What would have worked — and what his current counsel is now pursuing, years later and with far worse facts — is a vacatur for a substantive or procedural defect, on the ground that he was never advised of the immigration consequences of the plea.

The single instruction that follows from all three: the right remedy depends on what the record is actually costing you, and on who you are. Diagnose the barrier before choosing the tool — and if you are not a citizen, do that with an immigration lawyer before you file anything at all.

Part X-D: Answering the question on the form

The most consequential moment in a person's relationship with their record is usually not in a courtroom. It is a checkbox on an application, answered in thirty seconds, with permanent consequences either way.

Read what the form actually asks. The variations are not interchangeable, and the correct answer differs:

"Have you ever been convicted of a crime?" — an arrest without conviction is a no.
"Have you ever been arrested?" — different question, and a sealed arrest may still require disclosure depending on the statute and the context.
"...other than a conviction that has been expunged or sealed?" — the exclusion is doing the work; answer accordingly.
"Have you ever been convicted of a felony?" — a misdemeanor is a no.
"...within the past seven years?" — the time limit is the whole question.
"Have you ever entered a plea of guilty or no contest, or participated in a diversion program?" — this reaches dispositions that are not convictions, and it is common on licensing and government applications.

Know what your statute authorizes. Some expungement statutes expressly permit a person to deny the arrest or conviction; some permit denial in employment but not in licensing or law enforcement applications; some are silent. The authorization to deny comes from the statute, not from the fact of sealing, and answering "no" where the statute does not authorize it can be a separate offense and is, in a licensing context, frequently punished more severely than the underlying record would have been.

Where you must answer yes, three practices help. Answer accurately and briefly, in the space provided, without narrative. Use neutral language: the offense, the date, the disposition. And attach — or offer — a short separate statement covering what happened, what you did afterward, and why it is not relevant to this position. Employers and boards respond to a person who addresses it directly far better than to one who is discovered.

Never lie on a federal form. Federal employment and security clearance questionnaires expressly reach sealed and expunged records, including juvenile matters, and a false answer is a separate federal offense — one that has ended far more careers than the underlying records ever did.

And know the timing protections. Under ban-the-box laws in most states and many cities, the criminal history question may not be asked until after a conditional offer; if it appears on an initial application in such a jurisdiction, that is itself a violation. Under the FCRA, an adverse decision based on a background report requires a pre-adverse action notice with a copy of the report and a reasonable opportunity to respond before the decision becomes final. That window is where errors get corrected, and it exists whether or not anyone points it out.

Part XI: Frequently asked questions

Will expungement let me say I was never arrested? It depends on the statute. Some expressly authorize denial; many permit denial in employment contexts but not in licensing or law enforcement applications. Read the statute before answering any question under oath.

How long does it take? Typically two to six months from filing, longer where a hearing is required or the prosecutor objects.

Do I need a lawyer? Not always — many courts have self-help packets, and clean slate states do it automatically. Counsel is worth it where eligibility is uncertain, where there are multiple cases or multiple counties, or where immigration is involved.

What does it cost? Filing fees range from nothing to a few hundred dollars per case, and many states provide waivers. Counsel typically runs several hundred to a few thousand dollars.

Can I get a DUI expunged? In many states, no — DUI is categorically excluded. And the driving record retains it for its own lookback period regardless of what happens to the criminal record.

Will it restore my gun rights? Only if the state's restoration provision is broad enough, and the analysis runs through 18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(20). Do not assume; ask.

I'm not a citizen. Will expungement protect me? Generally no. A vacatur granted solely for rehabilitative purposes does not eliminate a conviction for immigration purposes. Talk to an immigration lawyer before filing anything.

What if the background check is wrong after I got relief? Dispute it under the FCRA with certified dispositions and the order attached. That process is separate from the court order and must be initiated by you.

Part XII: For non-lawyers — the sequence

Get your record. Request your state criminal history from the state repository, and consider an FBI identity history summary. You cannot fix what you have not read, and people are routinely wrong about their own records.
Get certified dispositions for every case, from every county. This is the document that proves what actually happened.
Check whether your state has automatic clean slate sealing, and whether your records should already have been cleared. If they should have been and were not, there is usually a correction process.
Determine eligibility for each case separately: offense category, waiting period, conviction-free period, sentence completion, and outstanding financial obligations — which are the most common bar.
Pay off or move to waive outstanding costs, or ask about a payment plan or conversion to community service. Many courts will do this and few people ask.
File, using the court's packet where one exists. Ask about a fee waiver.
After the order, send certified copies to: the state repository, the FBI, the arresting agency, the court, and every background check company you can identify, with a written FCRA dispute.
Re-run a background check on yourself three months later to confirm it worked.
If you are not a citizen, talk to an immigration lawyer first — not after.
If a job or apartment was denied, ask for the pre-adverse action notice and the report, and dispute the error inside the response window.

Primary authority

15 U.S.C. § 1681c — FCRA limits on reporting arrests and other adverse information, and the salary threshold exception.
18 U.S.C. § 921(a)(20) — what counts as a conviction for federal firearms purposes, and the effect of pardon, expungement, and restoration of civil rights.
18 U.S.C. § 922 — the firearm prohibitions themselves.
18 U.S.C. § 925(c) — relief from firearm disabilities (unfunded as to individuals for many years).
18 U.S.C. § 3607 — the narrow federal expungement route for first-offense simple possession by a person under 21.
42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2 — Title VII, the basis of disparate impact challenges to blanket criminal history exclusions.
The Second Chance Act, 34 U.S.C. § 60501 et seq.; the Immigration and Nationality Act's definition of "conviction," 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(48); state expungement, sealing, set-aside, certificate of relief, clean slate, ban-the-box, fair chance, and occupational licensing reform statutes.