Illinois poised to enact Nation’s broadest automatic sealing law
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.)