Restoration of Rights Project – California Profile
Guide to restoration of rights, pardon, sealing & expungement following a California criminal conviction
California Compilation of Collateral Consequences
On-line inventory of California Collateral Consequences (CCRC, 2017)
Jobs for All: The Movement to Restore Employment Rights for Formerly Incarcerated People
2017 report by the Rosenberg Foundation
2015 report by the Renewing Communities Initiative of the The Stanford Criminal Justice Center and the Warren Institute at the UC Berkeley School of Law
2015 report by the National Employment Law Project.
Helping Immigrant Clients with Proposition 47 and Other Post-Conviction Legal Options
2015 guide by Californians for Safety and Justice.
A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Criminal Record Expungement in Santa Clara County
2014 report by the San Jose State University Record Clearance Project
2011 report by the Pacific Juvenile Defender Center
* Be sure to check for changes in the relevant laws since this resource is fairly dated.
Related blog posts:
- Oklahoma and California win Reintegration Champion awards for 2022 laws (1/17/2023) - On January 10 we posted our annual report on new laws enacted in 2022 to restore rights and opportunities to people with a record of arrest or conviction. Like our earlier reports, it documents the steady progress of what we characterized two years ago as “a full-fledged law reform movement” aimed at restoring rights and dignity to individuals who have successfully navigated the criminal law system. This year’s criminal record reforms bring the total number of separate laws enacted in the past five years to more than 500. Posted below is our fourth annual legislative Report Card recognizing the most productive states in 2022. Reintegration Awards for 2022 While more than a handful of states enacted noteworthy laws in 2022, two states stand out for the quantity and quality of their legislation: California and Oklahoma share our 2022 Reintegration Champion award for their passage of at least two major pieces of record reform legislation. California – Enacted a whopping 11 new laws, including the broadest general record clearing law in the nation, a direction to courts to effectuate clearing of marijuana records, removal of restitution as a bar to clearing criminal records, easing access to judicial certificates of rehabilitation, and simplification
- Marijuana legalization and record clearing in 2022 (12/20/2022) - CCRC is pleased to announce a new report on recent cannabis-specific record sealing and expungement reforms in the past 18 months. The report, extending CCRC’s fruitful collaboration with the Drug Enforcement and Policy Center at The Ohio State University, is available here. An accompanying infographic (reproduced at the end of this postr) summarizes the report’s findings, and includes a color-coded US map showing which states have enacted cannabis-specific record-clearing provisions. To supplement the map, the report includes an appendix classifying and describing marijuana-specific record clearing statutes in all 50 states, based on CCRC’s 50-state comparison chart on “Marijuana Legalization, Decriminalization, Expungement and Clemency.” To put our new report in context, CCRC and DEPC reported 18 months ago on an “unprecedented period for policymaking at the intersection of marijuana legalization and criminal record reform in the first months of 2021,” with four states (New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, and Virginia) legalizing marijuana possession and at the same time providing criminal record relief for past convictions along with a variety of social equity provisions. Our report shows this trend continuing into 2022. Since our 2021 report, four additional states (Connecticut, Maryland, Missouri, and Rhode Island) have adopted similar record-clearing provisions in
- A closer look at racial disparities in California’s automatic record clearing (9/19/2022) - Numerous studies have demonstrated how Black Americans are treated more harshly at every stage of the criminal legal system—from over-policing to overcharging to more punitive sentencing. New research from California shows how eligibility limitations on criminal record relief perpetuate racial disparities in the criminal justice system, and have a disproportionately adverse effect on Black Americans. The study, by Alyssa Mooney, Alissa Skog, and Amy Lerman, and published in Law & Society Review, examined recent legislative changes to criminal record relief laws in California, one of the first states to automate relief. The study assessed the equity of California’s existing automatic record relief laws by examining the share of people with criminal records who are presently eligible for automatic record clearing, and variations across racial and ethnic groups.
- Racial disparity in clean slate record clearing? California responds (8/25/2022) - Reproduced below is a press release describing new research by three California scholars published in the Law & Society Review, based on California sentencing data, showing how eligibility criteria for automatic record clearing “can inadvertently perpetuate racial inequity within the criminal justice system.” This conclusion seems to us unsurprising, and likely has broader national application for two interrelated reasons: Prosecution policies nationwide have tended to result in more Blacks than Whites being convicted of more serious felonies resulting in prison sentences, while eligibility for automatic record clearance has to date been authorized primarily for non-convictions and misdemeanors (see sections 2 and 3 from the 50-state charts at this link from our Restoration of Rights website: https://ccresourcecenter.org/state-restoration-profiles/50-state-comparisonjudicial-expungement-sealing-and-set-aside-2/.) The authors recommend that “to reduce the racial gap in criminal records, a change in policy needs to happen to extend record clearance eligibility to a wider range of cases—for example, people with felonies or those sent to prison who are currently excluded.” The California legislature seems to have anticipated the recommendations in this report, for on August 18 it enrolled and sent to Governor Newsom’s desk a bill that would extend existing automatic record clearing authority to most felonies after four felony-free years,
- Waiting for Relief: A National Survey of Waiting Periods for Record Clearing (2/23/2022) - Our new report is the first-ever comprehensive national survey of the period of time a person, who is otherwise eligible to expunge or seal a misdemeanor or felony conviction record, must wait before obtaining this relief. Waiting periods are usually established by statute and can range from 0 to 20 years. Typically, during a waiting period the person must be free from certain forms of involvement with the justice system: from a felony conviction, from any conviction, or from any arrest, again depending on state law. These and other conditions and circumstances may extend (or occasionally shorten) the length of a waiting period in specific cases. Waiting for Relief: A National Survey of Waiting Periods for Record Clearing The waiting periods for misdemeanor convictions range from a high of 10 or 15 years in Maryland (depending on the nature of the offense) to 0 years in Mississippi (although only first-time offenses are eligible), with most states falling at the lower end of that range. Of the 44 states that authorize clearing of misdemeanor convictions, a near-majority have waiting periods of 3 years or less (19 states) and the vast majority have waiting periods of 5 years or less (35 states).
- Illinois set to become fifth state to cover criminal record discrimination in its fair employment law (2/13/2021) - NOTE: Governor Pritzker signed S1480 into law on March 23. In our recent report on criminal record reforms enacted in 2020, we noted that there were only four states that had fully incorporated criminal record into their fair employment law as a prohibited basis of discrimination. These states (New York, Wisconsin, Hawaii, and California) provide that employers can only disqualify a person based on their record if it meets a specific standard, such as being related to the work in question or posing an unreasonable risk to public safety. Illinois will become the fifth state to take this important step as soon as Governor Pritzker signs S1480. Illinois has been working up to this, having amended its Human Rights Act in 2019 to prohibit employment discrimination based on “an arrest not leading to a conviction, a juvenile record, or criminal history record information ordered expunged, sealed, or impounded.” With S1480, Illinois has now taken the final step of incorporating criminal record fully into the law’s structure, which includes authorization to file a lawsuit in the event administrative enforcement is unsatisfactory. A preliminary analysis of the new Illinois law indicates that it now offers more protection for more people with a
- Momentum grows to restore voting rights to people with a felony (2/3/2021) - Our new report on 2020 legislative reforms shows continued progress in state efforts to expand voting rights for people with a felony conviction. Despite a courtroom setback at the Eleventh Circuit, where a federal appeals court ruled that Florida’s landmark 2018 felony re-enfranchisement initiative does not restore the vote to people who owe court debt, two additional states and D.C. took major actions to restore voting rights to people convicted of a felony. Already in 2021, an impressive 19 states are considering bills to ease or eliminate prohibitions on voting based on a past conviction. In 2020, California restored the vote to people on parole, via a ballot initiative amending the state constitution. Iowa‘s governor issued an executive order restoring voting rights to people convicted of most felonies after completion of incarceration and supervision. And the District of Columbia repealed felony disenfranchisement altogether so that even people in prison may vote. Since 2016, 19 states have taken steps to restore the right to vote for people with a felony and expand awareness about eligibility. In 2021, at least 19 state legislatures are considering bills that would expand the franchise to those with a conviction: 5 states are considering measures to
- Legislative update: third quarter 2019 sees more new licensing and expungement laws (10/11/2019) - In July we reported on the extraordinary number of new laws enacted in the first half of 2019 aimed at restoring rights and status after arrest and conviction. A total of 97 separate pieces of legislation, some covering multiple topics, were enacted by 38 states and many broke new ground in their jurisdictions. Moreover, clear trends begun in 2018 accelerated in the first half of 2019, as state lawmakers continued to focus most of their attention on facilitating access to record-clearing. In addition, a significant number of new laws limited the authority of occupational licensing boards to disqualify a person based on criminal record. Another area of progress was restoring voting rights. Those trends continued over the summer, with 17 new laws, including significant laws enacted to regulate occupational licensing and expand record relief, including but not limited to marijuana convictions. Several states showed a keen interest in exploring the possibility of automating record relief, although only one state actually enacted an automatic relief system by the end of the quarter (New York, for marijuana convictions). (California enacted a “clean slate” law shortly after the beginning of the fourth quarter.) At the end of the third quarter, Arkansas, Colorado and Florida
- California becomes third state to adopt “clean slate” record relief (10/10/2019) - On October 8, Governor Newsom signed into law AB 1076, the so-called “Clean Slate Act,” authorizing automatic record relief in the form of set-aside or sealing for individuals with certain convictions and arrests under California law. The new law supplements but does not supplant the existing system of petition-based relief, and applies to convictions and arrests occurring after the bill’s effective date of January 1, 2021. Eligibility for automatic relief under the new law is similar to but not precisely coincident with eligibility under existing law. The new law also for the first time prohibits courts and the state repository from disclosing information about conviction records that have been granted relief, except where specifically authorized, whether under the new automatic process or the older petition-based system. California is now the third state to adopt general “clean slate” record relief, after Pennsylvania (2018) and Utah (2019). While the automatic feature of the new law has prospective effect only, its limits on disclosure will, when effective, apply to all conviction records that have at any time been dismissed or set aside, whether automatically or by petition, as well as to all arrests and other non-conviction records that have been sealed. The specific
- California poised to become third state to adopt “clean slate” record relief (10/3/2019) - On September 23, the California legislature sent AB 1076 to California Governor Gavin Newsom, who has until October 13 to sign or veto this potentially transformative legislation. If enacted, AB 1076 would make California the third state (after Pennsylvania (2018) and Utah (2019)) to authorize “clean slate” record relief, a direction to authorities to seal certain arrest and conviction records automatically. (Illinois, New York, and California have enacted automatic relief for certain marijuana convictions, and several states have automatic relief for non-convictions.) AB 1076 creates a parallel eligibility scheme that overlaps but is not exactly coincident with the petition-based system, as well as a new procedure for automatic relief. The specific provisions are described generally below, and more fully after the break. AB 1076 would not modify eligibility for relief under California’s existing scheme of judicial remedies for people with criminal records, via sealing as well as dismissal and set-aside. Rather, effective January 1, 2021, it would create a new process obviating the requirement of an individually-filed petition or motion in most cases. If this bill is signed into law, California would break new ground in becoming the first state to extend automatic “clean slate” relief to felony convictions (other than for