Decoding New York's Clean Slate Act One Year Later

On November 16, 2024, New York's Clean Slate Act reached its first anniversary - and if you're a New York employer, you've probably noticed your background check reports look different from what they did a year ago.

The law's intent is straightforward: give people with eligible criminal records a genuine second chance. Seal misdemeanors after three years, felonies after eight. Exclude serious offenses like sex crimes, murder, and Class A felonies (excluding drug-related offenses). Create a path forward for people who've served their time and stayed out of trouble.

It's a good policy that accomplishes important goals.

However, like most well-intentioned legislation, the implementation has been more complex than anyone anticipated. And for employers trying to make responsible hiring decisions while navigating this new landscape, the past year has been a learning curve.

At CIChecked, we've spent the past year working alongside New York employers to protect vulnerable populations. We've helped them adapt their screening processes to make confident hiring decisions in this new environment.

Here's what we've learned: Clean Slate didn't just change what appears in background checks. It changed how smart employers approach the entire hiring evaluation process. And the organizations that adapted early are the ones making better hiring decisions faster than they did before.

This is what Clean Slate looks like one year after signing - what's actually happening with record sealing, what it means for your hiring process, and how to build a screening approach that protects your organization while respecting the law's intent.

The Reality Check: What's Happening

When Governor Hochul signed the New York Clean Slate Act, the New York State Office of Court Administration (NYS OCA) received a clear mandate: implement an eligible record sealing process within three years. That deadline is November 16th, 2027.

One year in, and we're in the middle of a massive data transformation project. The NYS OCA is building the infrastructure to identify, review, and seal millions of criminal records across New York's 62 counties - each with its own court systems, record-keeping practices, and technological capabilities.

The reality is that automated sealing isn't happening uniformly across the state. Some counties have digital systems that communicate with the state database relatively smoothly. Others are still operating with paper records and legacy technology that make the sealing process far more manual than "automated" suggests.

Records are being sealed, but it's happening in waves rather than all at once. The process prioritizes certain record types and jurisdictions, which means background check results can vary depending on where an applicant lived and when their case was adjudicated.

And here's the technical reality - even when records are sealed in the state system, it takes time for that sealing to propagate across all the databases that employers and background check providers access. We're talking weeks, sometimes months, of lag time where a record might show up in one search but not another.

The employers navigating this most successfully aren't the ones panicking about what they can't see - they're the ones who've expanded their investigation methodology to gather more complete information from sources beyond criminal databases.

What's Changed in Your Background Check Results

The most common Clean Slate question we get: "What does 'no criminal record found' actually mean now?" It means we searched available databases and court records and found no records that haven't been sealed.

Pre-Clean Slate, "no record found" indicated (most likely) no criminal history in accessible records. 

Post-Clean Slate, it indicates no currently visible criminal history in accessible records, now that they may be sealed.

A candidate might have a 2016 misdemeanor that's now sealed. Maybe a 2018 petit larceny charge that qualified for sealing. Possibly even a 2014 felony that's been sealed after the eight-year waiting period. Depending on where the sealing process stands, none of that would appear on their background check today.

And that's exactly what the law intends.

Those sealed records represent situations that people have resolved, sentences they've completed, and waiting periods they've satisfied without reoffending. New York State determined these individuals deserve a second chance and that those records shouldn't be permanent barriers to employment.

As an employer, your job isn't to work around this. Your job is to make informed hiring decisions with the information that's appropriately available to you - and to expand your evaluation process beyond what any single criminal database provides.

The candidates who truly have no criminal history look identical on paper to candidates whose eligible convictions have been sealed. Your background check provider can't tell you which scenario you're dealing with - and legally, we shouldn't.

But that doesn't mean you're making blind decisions.

The New Approach: Expanding Beyond Criminal Databases

Here's what some New York employers figured out quickly: if criminal record databases now provide less complete information, the solution isn't to complain about Clean Slate. The solution is to strengthen the other components of your background investigation.

This is actually how thorough screening should have worked all along.

Employment Verification That Verifies

Most employers treat employment verification as a checkbox exercise - confirm dates, confirm title, move on. That's not enough anymore.

When you're verifying employment history, you're gathering multiple data points that inform your hiring decision: continuity of employment, career progression, reason for leaving, eligibility for rehire, and any gaps that might warrant conversation.

If you see unexplained gaps in employment history, that's not an invitation to interrogate candidates about sealed criminal records. It's an opportunity to have a straightforward conversation: "I noticed a gap in your employment from 2016 to 2019. Can you tell me about that period?"

The answer might be parenting responsibilities, health issues, family caregiving, education, travel, or yes - incarceration from a now-sealed conviction. What matters is whether the candidate can provide a reasonable explanation and whether their work history before and after that gap demonstrates reliability and competence.

Reference Checks That Go Deeper

Most reference checks lack true substance because employers ask surface-level questions and accept polite non-answers. If you're going to make reference checks count, you need to ask questions that actually reveal job-relevant information:

• How did this person handle conflict or disagreement with coworkers?
• Can you describe their reliability and attendance patterns?
• How did they respond to feedback or correction?
• What situations brought out their best work? What situations challenged them?
• Would you rehire them if the opportunity arose? Why or why not?

These questions reveal character, judgment, and workplace behavior - information that's far more predictive of job success than whether someone has a sealed misdemeanor from seven years ago.

Professional License and Credential Verification

For regulated professions, license verification isn't just a compliance requirement - it's a comprehensive screening tool. Professional licensing boards conduct their own background investigations and ongoing monitoring. A valid, unrestricted professional license tells you that the person has been vetted by the regulatory authority that oversees their profession.

This is especially valuable in healthcare, where CIChecked's Healthcare Comply Plus™ searches consolidate multiple exclusion databases (OIG, SAM, OMIG, state Medicaid exclusions) that professional licensing boards may not catch but that absolutely disqualify someone from healthcare employment.

Address History and Identity Verification

Comprehensive SSN and address history verification serves two purposes: it confirms you're investigating the right person, and it identifies jurisdictions where criminal record searches should be conducted.

Clean Slate only seals records in New York. If a candidate lived in another state during portions of their history, criminal records from those jurisdictions remain fully visible. Thorough address history ensures you're not missing relevant information from out-of-state locations.

Education Verification

Education verification confirms credentials, but it also provides timeline validation. If someone claims to have been a full-time student from 2015 - 2019, their university records should support that. If there's a discrepancy, that's worth exploring - not because you're hunting for sealed records, but because accuracy and honesty matter in hiring decisions.

NY Hiring Compliance Laws and Clean Slate

Clean Slate exists alongside other New York employment laws that were already on the books, and understanding how these interact is essential for making legally sound hiring decisions.

New York Article 23-A: The Foundation

New York has protected individuals with criminal records since 1976, long before Clean Slate existed. Article 23-A of the New York Correction Law prohibits employers from denying employment based on criminal history unless there's a "direct relationship" between the conviction and the job, or hiring the person would create an "unreasonable risk" to property, safety, or welfare.

Article 23-A requires employers to consider eight specific factors before denying employment based on criminal history - but now you're often conducting this analysis on partial information, or not conducting it at all, because eligible records are sealed.

Here's the key: You still must comply with Article 23-A when you DO see criminal records, but some records that would have triggered this analysis are now sealed and legally unavailable to you.

NYC Fair Chance Act: Process Matters

While New York State doesn't have a statewide Fair Chance Act, many employers have adopted Fair Chance principles - either because they operate in New York City, because they want consistent policies, or because they recognize it's good business practice.

Fair Chance hiring is about process - when you can ask about criminal history, how you must evaluate it, and what safeguards you must provide to candidates before making adverse decisions.

Clean Slate is about access - what criminal history information is even available to consider in the first place.

When you layer these together, you're navigating restrictions on asking about criminal history while simultaneously dealing with the reality that much of that history is sealed anyway. The good news is that when you expand your investigation beyond criminal databases, Fair Chance compliance becomes simpler because you're making decisions based on verified work history, reference feedback, and demonstrated competence rather than solely on criminal records.

Looking Ahead: The Clean Slate Domino Effect

New York isn't pioneering uncharted territory - it's following a growing national movement. As of 2025, twelve states have enacted some form of Clean Slate legislation that automates the sealing or expungement of eligible criminal records. Several more states have active legislation under consideration, including Maryland, Illinois, Virginia, and Massachusetts.

The trend is clear. Clean Slate isn't a New York anomaly. It's becoming the standard approach to criminal justice reform across the country.

If you operate in multiple states, you can't maintain a single, uniform background check policy anymore. What's legally required in New York differs from what's available in Texas. Your screening approach needs to be state-specific, with policies that account for different sealing laws, different Fair Chance requirements, and different timelines for when records become sealed.

The employers building flexible, adaptable screening frameworks now - rather than rigid, one-size-fits-all policies - are the ones positioned to navigate this evolving patchwork of state laws as Clean Slate continues spreading.

The Bottom Line

Clean Slate is the new normal, and it's only becoming more widespread as other states follow.

One year into implementation, and here's what we've observed: employers who adapted their screening processes early are making faster, more confident hiring decisions with expanded investigation methods that provide richer information than criminal databases alone ever did.

The ones who resisted change or hoped the law would go away are struggling with incomplete information, confusion about compliance, and anxiety about hiring decisions.

The good news? The screening methodology that works best in a Clean Slate environment is also the most effective approach for making quality hires, regardless of what Clean Slate laws exist. Thorough employment verification, meaningful reference checks, comprehensive credential validation, and careful address history investigation have always been best practices - Clean Slate just makes them essential.

You're not working around the law. You're working smarter within it.

At CIChecked, we've spent the past year helping New York employers build screening processes that deliver confident hiring decisions in a Clean Slate environment. We've seen what works, we've refined the methodology, and we know how to expand investigations beyond criminal databases to provide the comprehensive information you need.

While others automate, we investigate. And in a Clean Slate environment, that human-driven investigative approach is exactly what makes the difference between hiring with confidence and hiring with anxiety.

Ready to strengthen your screening process for Clean Slate compliance? Contact us at (518) 271-7546 to discuss how we can help you make informed hiring decisions with the information that's available to you.