Utah’s Clean Slate law goes into effect, automatically clearing old and minor criminal records

Salt Lake City – Thursday, Utah officially began automatic expungement and becomes the second state in the country to implement a Clean Slate law. In 2019, Utah lawmakers unanimously passed Utah’s Clean Slate law, which automatically clears old and minor criminal records of individuals who have remained crime free for a set period of time.

Gov. Spencer Cox said, “We believe in the rule of law and that people should be held accountable when a law is broken. But we also believe in second chances. Utah’s Clean Slate law is a common-sense policy that will help people find housing, get jobs and contribute back to their communities after paying their debt to society.”

Utah Courts Spokesperson Tania Mashburn explained that having a criminal record is more common than many people realize. More than 1 in 4 Utahns have some type of record and those records can create barriers to housing and jobs. Nearly 500,000 Utahns have been identified for automatic clearance so far.

State Court Administrator Ron Gordon said, “We know that our legal systems have barriers and that many of our neediest Utahns require a lawyer to help them and cannot afford one. Criminal record expungement is one of these areas. Due to cost, the complicated process, lack of knowledge, and lack of legal representation, less than 10% of people eligible to clear their records have made it through the process. Utah’s Clean Slate law changes this landscape completely.”

Utah’s Clean Slate law provides automatic record expungement for cases dismissed with prejudice and certain qualifying misdemeanor conviction records.

  • Individuals must remain conviction-free for 5-7 years (depending on the level of the offense) in order to qualify.
  • Covered offenses include misdemeanor A drug possession, most misdemeanor B and C level offenses, and all infractions.
  • The new law will not clear any felony records, domestic violence related offenses, sex offenses, simple assault, or DUI offenses.
  • There are also numerical limits, which means that some individuals will have too many total records to qualify for any automatic clearance.

Mashburn said the Utah Courts will first start to clear records of cases that have been dismissed or resulted in an acquittal. There are 218,000 records with over 800,000 combined cases that fall into these categories and will be automatically expunged. These cases will not all be expunged at once. This will happen in batches over the coming months.


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