Note: We are very pleased to publish a summary of the several significant record reforms enacted by Virginia in 2025, prepared by Rob Poggenklass. Rob is executive director of Justice Forward Virginia, a public defender-led criminal justice policy advocacy organization. He was deputy director of CCRC in 2022. 

The Commonwealth of Virginia has continued to make significant progress toward reducing the collateral consequences of criminal conviction, although a closely divided government has meant that reforms have been more incremental in recent years. Here are the several new laws that Virginia enacted during the 2025 legislative session:

• Occupational licensing reforms;
• Expansion of vacatur eligibility for victims of human trafficking;
• Two bills easing employment restrictions for people convicted of “barrier crimes”; and
• Technical updates and policy changes to the major 2021 record sealing law, which will take effect July 1, 2026;

In addition, the General Assembly took the first step toward amending the Virginia Constitution to ensure that a felony conviction results in loss of the right to vote (and potentially other civil rights) only during actual incarceration.

These six major new authorities are described below. I expect that the Virginia General Assembly’s exemplary performance in enacting these important new provisions will be in for recognition in CCRC’s annual round-up of new record reforms.

Occupational licensing. SB826 follows reforms in other states like Colorado in prohibiting regulatory boards from using vague terms like “good moral character” or “moral turpitude” to refuse a license, certificate, or registration. The law also requires a regulatory board, when issuing a denial, to specify in writing which conviction or convictions on the person’s record contributed to the denial, and to explain how that criminal history “directly relates” to the license sought and how the board weighed rehabilitative factors in its decision.

The new law also establishes a “predetermination” process for licensing eligibility, so that a person can obtain, prior to investing in training or education, a binding written determination as to whether their criminal history would disqualify them from obtaining a license, certificate, registration or other authority.

Human trafficking. A 2021 law authorized vacatur and expungement for victims of sex trafficking, but limited eligibility to those victims who had been convicted of prostitution-related offenses. HB2393 / SB1460 expands eligibility to include victims who were convicted of felony drug possession or a variety of misdemeanor offenses, including larceny offenses, trespass, destruction of property, using a false ID, identity theft, driving without a license, driving on a suspended license, or disorderly conduct.

The law also makes three other significant changes. First, it adds a definition of “labor trafficking” and makes labor trafficking victims eligible for vacatur and expungement under the law. Second, it specifies the requirements for what to include when filing a petition for relief. Third, the law adds a provision stating there is no requirement that a human trafficking victim must have cooperated with a law enforcement investigation or prosecution to meet the requirements for record relief.

Barrier crimes. Two new laws are intended to offer new employment opportunities for people convicted under Virginia’s barrier crimes regime. A conviction for an offense listed in the barrier crimes law expressly prohibits people from working in most jobs that involve caring for children, the elderly, or the disabled. The first new law, HB1924, gives school boards the option to hire a person convicted of a barrier crime if their offense conduct did not involve specified sex crimes involving a child, the person’s civil rights have been restored, 20 years have passed since the person completed their sentence, and the school board has determined the person has the requisite character to serve in the position. This law also applies to the awarding of contracts by school boards.

The second law, HB1877, eliminates several requirements for individuals serving as peer recovery specialists. The law reenacts previous requirements that a person serving as a peer recovery specialist must be free of probation or parole for at least five years, but provides that a person can work as a peer recovery specialist even if they have not paid all fines, court costs, or restitution from all previous convictions.

Record sealing. Virginia passed transformative record sealing legislation back in 2021, which we previously discussed here. The 2021 law, with minor amendments in 2023, established a system of automatic record sealing for a handful of misdemeanor convictions, as well as automatic sealing for certain non-conviction records. The law also established broad eligibility for petition-based sealing of most misdemeanor convictions and low-level felony convictions. The law set a delayed enactment of July 1, 2025, giving stakeholders such as the Virginia State Police four years to overhaul their computer systems to prepare for the new law.

Since 2021, however, stakeholders have identified numerous technical issues with the 2021 law, as well as some important substantive issues, requiring the General Assembly to enact revisions before it takes effect. SB1466 / HB2723, which passed the Democratic-controlled General Assembly with large bipartisan support and was signed into law by Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, makes a series of technical changes to the 2021 law.

• Ensures that all marijuana possession records will be sealed. Virginia decriminalized adult marijuana possession in 2020 and legalized it in 2021. Expungement of marijuana offenses was originally included in the marijuana legalization bill with a delayed enactment date, but as challenges emerged with the process, those provisions were removed from the legalization bill and put into the record sealing legislation. Because most marijuana possession charges were not reported to the state repository, which is where Virginia’s automatic record sealing process will begin, the 2021 legislation would not have sealed most marijuana possession court records.
• Creates a petition process for sealing offenses that should be sealed automatically, but erroneously were not.
• Limits automatic sealing at the conclusion of a criminal case to acquittals and dismissals with prejudice, rather than charges resolved by nolle prosequi. This change removes prosecutorial and judicial discretion and ensures these records will be sealed unless the subject of the record objects. Other non-conviction records can be expunged by petition using the existing expungement law.
• Provides that no offenses before January 1, 1986 will be eligible for sealing. This was a major concern of the circuit court clerks, who did not want to go digging through boxes of records—many of which are stored at off-site locations—whenever a petition to seal a very old record was filed.
• Provides for other technical amendments requested by the Virginia State Police and other stakeholders.

The delayed effective date of the 2021 law also gave the legislature an opportunity to reconsider the breadth of petition-based sealing authorized by the 2021 law, so that many serious felonies that were eligible for sealing by petition under the earlier law will no longer be eligible under the 2025 law, such as (but not limited to) enumerated violent offenses, sex crimes, hate crimes, and election fraud. About 90% of all misdemeanors and nearly two-thirds of all Class 5 and Class 6 felonies, plus all larceny felonies, are eligible for sealing under the new law. (A complete list of ineligible offenses is available on Justice Forward Virginia Foundation’s expungement and record sealing resource page.)

At the same time, the 2025 law provides for the sealing of ancillary offenses (e.g., probation violations, failures to appear, and bond appeals) when the underlying conviction is sealed, and removes all filing fees and service of process costs for expungement and record sealing by petition. The 2025 law also removes a provision that established a right to counsel for indigent record sealing petitioners. The administration of that part of the law was considered unworkable.

The substantial changes to sealing eligibility also prompted the General Assembly to delay enactment of all the changes made to both record sealing and expungement during the 2021, 2023 and 2025 legislative sessions by one year, to July 1, 2026. Nonetheless, on that date, Virginia will finally join the ranks of states that provide for sealing of criminal convictions, including automatic sealing for less serious misdemeanors and many non-conviction records.

Restoration of rights. Virginia is one of four states that still require executive clemency to restore the civil rights of a person convicted of a felony, including the right to vote. While other recent governors have routinely restored civil rights en masse, Gov. Glenn Youngkin has taken a more restrictive approach, prompting several lawsuits and forcing Virginia’s Jim Crow-era voting restrictions back into the spotlight.

During the 2025 legislative session, the General Assembly took the first step toward amending the Virginia Constitution to provide that those convicted of felonies lose the right to vote only during a period of actual incarceration. (SJ248 / HJ2). Those who are not sentenced to prison will not lose the right to vote at all. (It is not clear whether this constitutional amendment is intended to affect the other basic civil rights that must now be restored by the Virginia governor, notably eligibility for jury service and public office.)

This resolution must pass the General Assembly again in 2026, after voters choose all 100 members of the House of Delegates—and a new governor—in November 2025. If the resolution passes a second time in 2026, it must then go to a referendum, most likely in November 2026. The General Assembly previously passed such a resolution in 2021, but it was shelved after Republicans retook the House of Delegates in that fall’s elections. Democrats regained a one-seat majority in 2023, and are hoping to expand it this fall.