On October 30, 2025, the Illinois General Assembly approved HB 1836, making Illinois the 13th “Clean Slate” state. Illinois will also have the broadest automated record-sealing program of them all.
The Governor’s signature will launch the implementation toward an automated record-sealing process to bridge the “second chance gap” for an estimated 2.2 million people with an Illinois criminal record. After necessary preparatory measures, sealing of existing conviction and non-conviction records is scheduled to begin in January 2029.
Illinois’ law will apply to most of the misdemeanor and felony convictions for which petition-based sealing is already authorized, with the same short waiting period. In addition, Illinois will now join the large group of states for which sealing of non-conviction records is mandatory and accomplished immediately upon a favorable case disposition.
Building on a Legacy of Progress
Illinois already leads the nation with one of the most expansive petition-based sealing laws. Since 2017, when lawmakers passed HB 2373, most felony conviction records have been eligible for sealing relief, after a comparatively brief waiting period of just three years from the end of a sentence. That law marked a turning point, expanding eligibility from only nine felony convictions to nearly all, with just a few exceptions.
The new Illinois Clean Slate Act builds directly on the foundation laid by the 2017 law. Like the petition-based process, automated sealing will apply to nearly all conviction records (unless already excluded under the petition-based process) after a three-year period from the end of sentence, except for a limited set of additional ineligible offenses involving the most serious felonies. Even these additional convictions ineligible for automatic relief, however, will remain eligible for petition-based relief. (Details of the existing laws and new Clean Slate legislation can be found in the Illinois profile from the Restoration of Rights Project.)
