The Minnesota Clean Slate Act: Automatic Expungement Explained

What the Clean Slate Act Does

Historically, only a small fraction of people eligible for expungement ever went through the petition process — it took time, money, and often a lawyer. The Clean Slate Act fixes that for many records by making the sealing automatic. The BCA identifies records in the state's Criminal History System that meet the criteria and seals them from public view, then informs the courts and law enforcement so they can seal their records too. No petition, no filing fee, no hearing.

What Qualifies for Automatic Sealing

Generally, the records that can be sealed automatically (after the person stays free of new offenses for the applicable waiting period) include:

• Non-conviction records — cases that ended without a conviction;
• Most misdemeanors and petty misdemeanors, after the waiting period;
• Many lower-level, non-violent felonies that were already eligible for petition-based expungement — the statute identifies a defined list, with a waiting period (commonly five years after discharge of the sentence);
• Pardoned convictions and certain cases of mistaken identity.

What's Excluded — Important Gaps

This is where people get tripped up. Automatic sealing does not cover everything, and notable exclusions include:

• Drug convictions — not eligible for automatic sealing (petition may still be available);
• Felonies reduced to gross misdemeanors, and gross misdemeanors reduced to misdemeanors — these are excluded from automatic sealing;
• Offenses requiring predatory offender registration and the most serious violent and sex offenses;
• Records where the whole case doesn't qualify — under a 2025 Minnesota Supreme Court order, the courts seal a case only if the entire case qualifies, not individual charges within a mixed case.

For anything that isn't covered automatically, petition-based expungement remains available — see our main expungement guide.

Where Implementation Stands

This is a real, operating program, not a future promise. Since the law took effect, the BCA — working with the Minnesota Judicial Branch — has been identifying and sealing eligible records across more than 16 million criminal history records, and has already sealed well over a million. Records become eligible on an ongoing basis as new cases meet the criteria, and the BCA reviews records periodically. Because this is a rolling process, the exact status of any one record can change over time.

Don't Assume — Confirm

The most important practical takeaway: don't assume your record was automatically cleared. Misidentification is possible, mixed cases may not qualify, and your particular offense may fall into an excluded category. You can request a copy of your own BCA record to check its status. If your record didn't qualify automatically, a petition may still be the path — and that's worth evaluating rather than assuming nothing can be done.

What Sealing Does and Doesn't Reach

Once sealed, a record generally isn't visible to the public or most employers and landlords. But criminal justice agencies, law enforcement, and certain state agencies retain access, and background checks run in other states may still surface the record unless a court orders it sealed across the National Crime Prevention and Privacy Compact. Sealing is powerful but not total erasure.