Until this year, there was no federal law authorizing expungement or sealing of a federal conviction. That changed on January 23, 2026, when President Trump signed into law the Trafficking Survivors Relief Act (TSRA), 18 U.S.C. § 3771A. The TSRA authorizes courts to grant record relief in the form of vacatur and expungement to survivors of human trafficking arrested or convicted of a nonviolent federal crime as a direct result of their being a victim of trafficking, defined as sex or labor trafficking under 22 U.S.C. 7102. Our research indicates that this is the first time in our Nation’s history that expungement of a conviction record has been explicitly authorized in federal law.
The only federal authority for expungement before enactment of the TSRA was the extremely narrow provision in the so-called Federal First Offender Act, 18 U.S.C. § 3607(a), which allows a person who is arrested for misdemeanor drug possession under 21 U.S.C. § 844 to avoid a conviction by participating in a program of deferred adjudication, as long as they have no prior drug conviction. Upon successful completion of the program, the charges are dismissed and no conviction results. Expungement is available for the resulting non-conviction record, but only if the person was under 21 at the time of the offense. See § 3607(c). Other than this one very limited authority, until the TRSA there was no authority in federal law to expunge or seal even acquittals and other non-conviction records. See Section III of the Federal profile from the Restoration of Rights Project.
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