Virginia
Restoration of Rights Project – Virginia Profile
Guide to restoration of rights, pardon, sealing & expungement following a Virginia criminal conviction
The Collateral Consequences of Arrests and Convictions under D.C., Maryland, and Virginia Law
By the Washington Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights & Urban Affairs (2014)
Related blog posts:
- Reintegration Champion Awards for 2021 (1/27/2022) - Based on our annual report on 2021 criminal record reforms, the bipartisan commitment to a reintegration agenda keeps getting stronger. A majority of the 151 new laws enacted last year authorize courts to clear criminal records, in some states for the very first time, and several states enacted “clean slate” automatic record clearing. Other new laws restore voting and other [...]
- 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 [...]
- 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. [...]
- Pennsylvania expands access to 255 licensed occupations for people with a record (7/14/2020) - On July 1, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf signed into law an expansive new regulation of the state’s occupational licensing process, giving the agencies that control access to 255 occupations detailed new standards for considering criminal records in the licensing process. Pennsylvania has not addressed these issues on a state-wide basis since the 1970’s, and with proper implementation the new law [...]
- Bumper crop of new expungement laws expected in 2019 (4/9/2019) - Earlier this year we reported that, in 2018, legislatures enacted an unprecedented number of new laws aimed at restoring rights and opportunities for people with a criminal record. (Last year 32 states, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands enacted 61 new laws to facilitate reentry and reintegration.) The first quarter of 2019 has already produced a baker’s dozen of new restoration laws, [...]
- New research report: Four Years of Second Chance Reforms, 2013-2016 (2/8/2017) - Introduction Since 2013, almost every state has taken at least some steps to chip away at the negative effects of a criminal record on an individual’s ability to earn a living, access housing, education and public benefits, and otherwise fully participate in civil society. It has not been an easy task, in part because of the volume and complexity of [...]
- What (if anything) does the Virginia voting rights decision tell us about the president’s pardon power? (7/24/2016) - On July 22, 2016, the Virginia Supreme Court struck down a series of executive orders issued by Governor Terry McAuliffe restoring voting and other civil rights to more than 200,000 convicted individuals. See Howell v. McAuliffe (Va. 2016). The court, in a 4-to-3 decision, disputed the governor’s assertion that his restoration power was absolute under the state’s Constitution. “We respectfully disagree,” [...]
- NYT says NO to “the other f-word,” and YES to Gov. McAuliffe (5/8/2016) - The New York Times has two great Sunday editorials on issues relating to collateral consequences. One deals with the issue of labeling people with a criminal record, of special concern when headline writers seem unable to resist using what Bill Keller at the Marshall Project recently called “the other F-word.” The editorial points out that ugly demeaning labels like “convict” and [...]
- A plea to stop labeling people who have a criminal record (4/25/2016) - On April 22, Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe issued an executive order restoring civil rights to more than 200,000 individuals once convicted of felonies. His courageous action is welcome and long overdue, and there are now only three states nationwide that permanently disenfranchise people based on a felony conviction. The Governor’s press release promises new restoration orders on a regular monthly basis [...]
- Federal fair chance hiring proposal advances (4/6/2015) - The following note was received today from the National Employment Law Project: We wanted to report back on the exciting progress in support of the federal fair chance hiring initiative, which builds on the momentum from the sign-on letter to the President that your organizations endorsed. On March 25th, representatives from NELP, All of Us or None, PICO National Network [...]