How Long Does a Felony Stay on Your Record? (2026 State Guide)

How long does a felony stay on your record? For life, unless something removes it: a court order that seals or expunges it, a state Clean Slate law that seals eligible records automatically with no filing, or, in some states, a pardon. Whether a background check can still show it is a separate question that depends on your state.

If you have heard that a felony drops off a background check after seven years, that rule was real, but federal law no longer applies it to convictions. Until November 1998, the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) barred background reports from including "records of arrest, indictment, or conviction of crime" more than seven years old. The seven years were counted from "disposition, release, or parole." Congress then added the phrase "other than records of convictions of crimes," and convictions have been exempt from the federal limit ever since. Only 11 states still cap how long a report can show one.

So two things decide the answer for your own record. One is whether your state limits how long a background report can show a conviction. The other is whether your state lets you seal the record, and after how long. The two tables below cover both, state by state.

Where does a felony record live after a conviction?

Three official offices keep a felony record once you are convicted. The court that sentenced you keeps the case file, your state keeps a central criminal history repository, and the FBI keeps a national file built from fingerprints. A sealing order changes only the records it reaches, so one court order can clear one file and leave the others in place. Everything here concerns convictions; charges that never became one follow different rules, which our guide to what shows up on a background check covers.

In practice, a record spreads further than those three offices, and Virginia's new sealing statutes show how far. According to the Virginia State Police, those statutes reach the State Police's Central Criminal Records Exchange, any Virginia court, any police department or sheriff's office, and the Department of Motor Vehicles. One more copy sits outside all of them, in data that private background check companies have already bought, which is why a record sealed today can surface again later.

One example runs through the rest of this guide. Say a court sentenced someone in March 2014 to two years for a nonviolent felony that both Michigan and New York treat as eligible for sealing. They were released in March 2016 with no parole and no new charges since. The conviction has been on their record since 2014, and any background report run on them can include it. Most of the clocks that could change that count from the 2016 release.

How do you check your own felony record?

Ask each office that holds a copy of your felony record. Your state's criminal records repository can usually send you your own history on request. The FBI accepts requests for your Identity History Summary on its website, and the clerk of the court that sentenced you can confirm whether the case file is sealed.

Background check companies keep their own copies, and the FCRA gives you rights over them. If a company sells reports covered by the FCRA, the law calls it a consumer reporting agency, and you can ask it for everything in your file. If a report includes a record that is wrong, or one that a sealing order covers, you can dispute it, which generally gives the agency 30 days to reinvestigate. If the same record keeps coming back, a lawyer or a legal-aid clinic can tell you what your state allows next. LawHelp.org lists nonprofit legal aid in every state.

Does a felony go away after seven years?

Not under federal law, which sets no time limit on reporting a felony conviction. The federal seven-year limit applies to arrests and other records that did not end in a conviction. As of October 2026, 11 states still cap conviction reporting at seven years in their own statutes, most with exceptions.

The dollar amounts mark where the limit stops. A report for a loan, a policy, or a job at or above the amount can still show an older conviction. In Kansas, New Hampshire, and Washington the job cutoff is $20,000, so most full-time jobs there fall outside the limit. If your state is not in this table, its consumer-reporting law sets no time cap on reporting a conviction.

In these statutes the seven years run from disposition, release, or parole, which means when the case ends or when you leave custody, rather than from the date of the offense. For the example conviction, a New York report covered by the limit could stop including it in March 2023, seven years after release. Michigan has no state limit, so a report there can keep including the same conviction for as long as the record is public.

If you live in Nevada, you may have seen it on screening-industry lists of seven-year states. It is missing from this table on purpose, because its current statute purges old adverse information "excluding a record of a conviction of a crime."

The list is this short because federal law froze state rules on what a report may contain at the ones already in effect on September 30, 1996. Whether each state seven-year limit in this table still governs a given report is unsettled, so a lawyer or legal-aid clinic is the place to check before you rely on one.

How long does a felony stay on your record in each state?

Most states let you petition a court to seal, expunge, or set aside an eligible felony, after waits that run from one to 20 years. Until then, the felony stays on your record. Thirteen states offer no general route for adult felony convictions, only narrow ones such as a pardon, youthful-offender relief, or a set-aside that leaves the record public.

Those 13 are Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Montana, Nebraska, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, and Wisconsin.

The word on the court order tells you what you get. In most states, sealing hides a record from the public while courts and law enforcement can still see it, and expungement goes further by treating the record as erased. A set-aside, a vacatur, or an annulment cancels the conviction itself but may leave the file public.

So a granted order can still leave your case in view. A Washington vacatur leaves the court file open, a Nebraska set-aside seals nothing, and an Indiana expungement of any felony above the lowest level stays public, "marked as expunged."

States also start their clocks from different events, so the same conviction can become eligible years apart in two states. New York counts ten years from sentencing or release, Michigan's petition clock runs five years from release, and Illinois counts three years from the end of your last sentence. In the example, Michigan's petition route opened in March 2021 and New York's in March 2026, five years later.

Three things help you read your row:

• Eligible felonies only: every state excludes some offenses, so a lawyer or legal-aid clinic should confirm that your conviction qualifies before you file.
• Class or degree: many rows depend on it, and your judgment or court file shows it.
• The convicting state: use the row for the state that convicted you, even if you have since moved, because its sealing rules apply.

We built the table from the Collateral Consequences Resource Center's Restoration of Rights Project state profiles. Then we checked its rows against state statutes and court, police, and legal-aid pages on October 13, 2026.

Your full answer comes from reading your state's rows in both tables together, and Texas shows why. A report covered by the Texas seven-year limit cannot show a conviction more than seven years after disposition, release, or parole, unless an exception applies, such as a loan or a job above the statute's dollar thresholds. Short of a full pardon, the record itself can be sealed only if the case ended in deferred adjudication, where the judge never entered a conviction. So a Texas conviction can stop appearing on reports the limit covers while the court record stays public. If you want the record itself cleared, the route left is a pardon, which the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles reviews and which entitles you to expunction if granted.

How do you get a felony expunged or sealed?

You usually start by filing a petition in the court that convicted you. Once you file, the prosecutor receives a copy and can object, and a judge decides whether to seal or expunge the felony, sometimes at a hearing. Michigan's attorney general says you may not need a lawyer there, and many applicants have filed on their own.

The paperwork and the wait depend on the state. In Michigan, you file a notarized application with certified copies of the judgment. You then mail copies to the prosecutor and the attorney general, and one to the state police with a fingerprint card and a $50 fee. The attorney general's response alone can take up to three months.

In Maryland, the statute gives the prosecutor or a victim 30 days to object before the court must order the expungement, and a $30 filing fee may apply. The state's People's Law Library puts the whole process at about three months.

A granted order also changes how some other laws treat the conviction, though not all of them. Federal gun law generally does not count a conviction that has been expunged, set aside, or pardoned, unless the pardon, the expungement, or the state law behind it bars you from having firearms. State gun laws can still apply, so ask a lawyer before you assume your rights are back. Immigration law generally still counts an expunged conviction, because U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services says an expunged record "does not remove the underlying conviction." If you are not a U.S. citizen, ask an immigration lawyer before you file.

Which states seal felonies automatically in 2026?

As of October 2026, seven states seal some felony convictions automatically under their Clean Slate laws, with no petition: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania. Each limits which felonies qualify, and the last column of the state table shows the limits.

Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey, and New York have laws that cover some felonies but have not started sealing them. Oklahoma, Utah, and Virginia leave felony convictions out, apart from pardoned ones in Oklahoma and Utah. Virginia's automatic sealing, which began on October 1, 2026, covers misdemeanors only, so a felony there still needs a petition. Separate cannabis laws clear some records on their own, too. Missouri's, for example, required courts to expunge eligible felony marijuana convictions automatically by December 8, 2023.

Michigan sets aside an eligible felony automatically ten years after sentencing or release from prison, whichever is later. That made the example conviction due for automatic set-aside in March 2026. If the person never petitioned, though they could have from 2021 onward, the conviction stayed reportable in Michigan for a full decade and then left public view with no filing at all.

In New York, the same conviction became eligible for automatic sealing in March 2024, eight years after release and two years before its petition route opened. But the courts have until November 16, 2027 to build the system that seals it. So in New York, reports covered by the seven-year limit could stop showing the felony in 2023, four years before the courts are due to seal it.

Automatic sealing can also happen without anyone telling you, so the only way to know is to check. Illinois Legal Aid Online notes that Illinois' law has no notification requirement, and the Clean Slate Initiative says Minnesota has no process to notify people. "Don't assume it was sealed. Don't assume it wasn't sealed. Get on the website first and check," Bryan Kennedy, board chair of Justice Forward Virginia, told the Roanoke TV station WSLS on October 1, 2026, the day Virginia's automatic sealing began.

Does a sealed felony show up on a background check?

A report run after the sealing should not include a sealed felony, and Colorado and Virginia write that rule into statute. Colorado bars consumer reports from including sealed or expunged records, and Virginia's sealing law prohibits background check companies from sharing sealed records.

Some people can still see a sealed record, because sealing narrows who has access rather than destroying the file. Pennsylvania's automatic sealing leaves records open to licensing agencies, and Illinois can release sealed felony records where a state or federal law requires a background check.

Old copies are the bigger risk. The National Consumer Law Center's Broken Records Redux report, published in December 2019, found that screening companies produce reports that include sealed or expunged records. Much of their data, the report says, is "purchased in bulk through intermediaries or obtained from websites via web scraping technology," and it "may be infrequently updated." A record sealed after a company bought its copy can therefore live on in that copy. California addresses part of the problem by requiring an investigative consumer reporting agency to verify public-record criminal information within the 30 days before it furnishes a report.

In the example, a Michigan report run after March 2026 should not include the set-aside conviction, while a copy a screening company bought in 2025 still can. If an older copy like that shows up on a report about you, you can dispute it with the company that produced the report.

Frequently asked questions

Does a pardon remove a felony from your record?

A pardon forgives a felony conviction but usually does not erase it from your record on its own. Some states connect the two. Connecticut erases pardoned convictions, Utah expunges them automatically, and Indiana expunges and seals them. In Alabama, South Dakota, and Maine, a pardon is the only route to clearing a felony at all. California and New Mexico also end consumer reporting of a conviction once a full pardon is granted.

Do misdemeanors follow the same rules as felonies?

Misdemeanors follow the same reporting rules as felonies, because federal law exempts every conviction from its seven-year limit and the 11 state limits cover any conviction. Sealing is where misdemeanors get easier, because the waits are shorter. New York's Clean Slate law seals misdemeanors after three years and felonies after eight. Michigan's automatic set-aside and Virginia's petition route both use seven years for misdemeanors and ten for felonies.

Can a felony be reduced to a misdemeanor?

A felony can be reduced to a misdemeanor in some states, and California's courts offer two routes. A judge can reduce a "wobbler," an offense the law allows to be either a felony or a misdemeanor, under Penal Code section 17(b). Proposition 47 also lets people convicted before November 2014 reduce some drug-possession felonies and some theft felonies involving $950 or less. Other states set their own rules, so a legal-aid office can check yours.

Can a felony be expunged after 10 years?

An eligible felony can be expunged or sealed after 10 years in most states, because most state waiting periods end by then. Every state excludes some offenses, though. Louisiana, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Wyoming, Virginia, and New York all set ten-year waits for petitions, so filing opens there at ten years. Time alone is not enough in states with no general felony relief, such as Texas and Florida, so a legal-aid clinic is the place to confirm your options.

Does a dismissed felony charge stay on your record?

A dismissed felony charge stays in the court's files unless a judge seals or expunges it, even though it never became a conviction. Whether a report can show it depends on where you live. Colorado's statute bars reports from including records that did not result in a conviction. Virginia can seal a felony charge dismissed with prejudice, meaning it cannot be refiled, if you ask and the prosecutor agrees.

Can a federal felony be expunged?

A federal felony generally cannot be expunged or sealed, because Congress has given federal courts no general authority to clear convictions. The Collateral Consequences Resource Center reports that the first federal statutory route, created in 2026, covers only survivors of human trafficking. A presidential pardon does not help here either, since the Justice Department says that after a pardon, "both the federal conviction as well as the pardon would both appear on your record."

Where felony record rules are still unsettled

Two federal questions that affect your record are still open. In January 2024 the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued guidance saying background reports must not contain sealed or expunged records. It also said a charge without a conviction can be reported for only seven years, counted from the charge itself. The bureau withdrew that guidance on May 12, 2025, so both questions now rest on the statute text and the courts.

Whatever the courts decide, the copies of your record will keep updating at different speeds, so three steps cover most situations:

1. Check each copy of your record: your state repository, your FBI Identity History Summary, and the court file in the county that sentenced you.
2. If your state offers a route and your wait has passed, file in the court that convicted you, with a legal-aid clinic's help if you need it.
3. If a report still shows a sealed or set-aside record, dispute it with the company that produced it.

A different note if you run trust and safety for a marketplace or short-term rental platform: that lag between a court order and a database copy affects you from the other side. That is why Authenticate's courthouse-level criminal search checks county courthouse records across 3,200+ U.S. counties instead of relying only on a database copy. Authenticate's court record checks are not for employment, tenancy, credit, or insurance decisions.

Related resources

• FCRA vs non-FCRA background checks
• Criminal background check levels explained
• What shows up on a background check