Under federal law, a felony conviction can show on a background check forever. The Fair Credit Reporting Act, which governs the companies that produce most employment and tenant screening reports, sets a seven-year limit on several kinds of negative information but specifically excludes criminal convictions from that limit. About a dozen states impose their own seven-year cap on how far back a background check company can reach for convictions, and expungement, record sealing, or an automatic “clean slate” law can remove a felony from standard reports entirely. Without one of those state protections or an affirmative step to clear your record, a felony follows you indefinitely.
The Federal Rule: No Time Limit on Convictions
The Fair Credit Reporting Act is the federal statute that regulates the private companies compiling criminal records into reports for employers, landlords, and others. It caps reporting at seven years for arrest records, civil judgments, paid tax liens, and most collection accounts. The provision prohibits reporting “any other adverse item of information, other than records of convictions of crimes” older than seven years. That “other than” clause pulls convictions out of the time limit entirely.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681c – Requirements Relating to Information Contained in Consumer Reports
The practical effect: a screening company operating under federal law alone can report a 30-year-old felony conviction the same way it would report one from last year. Arrests that never resulted in a conviction, on the other hand, drop off after seven years, or when the statute of limitations expires, whichever is longer.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681c – Requirements Relating to Information Contained in Consumer Reports
It’s worth separating two things people often blur together. Your official criminal record, held by the court and by state and federal law enforcement, never disappears with time. The FBI’s criminal history database retains records indefinitely. A background check report is a separate document, produced by a private company from those government records, and it’s the report that FCRA rules constrain. So the question isn’t really whether the conviction still exists somewhere; it does. The question is whether the report an employer or landlord orders is allowed to include it.
The $75,000 Salary Exception
Even the seven-year protections that federal law does provide for non-conviction items have a substantial loophole. When a background check is run for a position with an expected annual salary of $75,000 or more, the FCRA’s time-based reporting limits on arrests, civil judgments, and other adverse items no longer apply.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 1681c – Requirements Relating to Information Contained in Consumer Reports For a higher-paying job, the screening company can report essentially everything in its database regardless of age. Because felony convictions already have no federal time limit at any salary level, this exception mainly affects old arrests without convictions that would otherwise have been excluded.
States That Cap Conviction Reporting at Seven Years
Roughly a dozen states go further than federal law and impose their own limits on how far back a consumer reporting agency can reach for convictions. Most use a seven-year lookback. California, Massachusetts, and Montana are among the states with relatively clean seven-year limits on conviction reporting.
Several other states have similar caps but attach salary-based exceptions that shrink their practical reach. In some of them, the seven-year rule applies only to jobs paying less than $20,000 or $25,000 per year, which leaves most professional positions uncovered. The specifics vary considerably, so if you want to know exactly what applies where you live, your state attorney general’s office or a local legal aid organization is the right place to check.
Clean Slate Laws
A newer approach, growing quickly, is “clean slate” legislation. Rather than restricting what background check companies can report, these laws automatically seal eligible criminal records after a person completes their sentence and stays crime-free for a set period. Once sealed, the record should not appear on standard background checks at all.
As of 2025, roughly 13 states and the District of Columbia have enacted clean slate laws. Details vary. In some states, eligible felony convictions are automatically sealed eight years after the sentence is complete. Others automatically seal only misdemeanors and still require a petition for felonies. Automatic sealing matters because petition-based systems, even generous ones, leave many eligible people behind: they don’t know they qualify, can’t afford a lawyer, or can’t navigate the paperwork.
Expungement and Petition-Based Sealing
Outside of automatic clean slate programs, most states offer some form of expungement or record sealing you can ask a court to grant. A successful expungement effectively destroys or shields the record from public view. Once expunged, it should not appear on most standard background checks, and in many states you can lawfully answer “no” when asked whether you were convicted of that crime.
Eligibility and Waiting Periods
Each state sets its own rules for which felonies qualify and how long you have to wait after finishing your sentence. Waiting periods generally run from three to ten years depending on the state and the seriousness of the offense. Lower-level felonies usually have shorter waits; some states allow petitions after three to five years, while others require seven to ten. Violent felonies and sex offenses are frequently excluded altogether.2National Conference of State Legislatures. Record Clearing by Offense
Court filing fees range from nothing (in states that waive fees for indigent petitioners) to several hundred dollars. Attorney fees add to that if you hire a lawyer, though many legal aid organizations help with expungement petitions for free or at reduced cost.
What Expungement Doesn’t Hide
An expunged record isn’t invisible to everyone. Certain employers and agencies retain access, including federal agencies conducting security clearance investigations, law enforcement agencies hiring officers, and licensing boards for professions like law, medicine, and finance. If you’re applying for anything that involves a government security clearance, assume the expunged record will be found.
When an Expunged Record Still Shows Up
A common and frustrating scenario: you successfully expunge a felony, then it appears on a background check anyway. This happens because commercial screening databases often hold a snapshot of your record from before the expungement was granted. The company pulls its stale copy and reports the conviction as if it still exists.
You have a right to fix this. If an employer is planning to deny you a job based on a background check, they must give you a copy of the report and a notice of your rights before making the decision final. That’s the pre-adverse action notice, and it has to include the actual report.3Federal Trade Commission. Using Consumer Reports: What Employers Need to Know Under the FCRA, you can dispute inaccurate or outdated information directly with the screening company, which then has 30 days to investigate and either correct the report or confirm it.4Consumer Advice – FTC. Disputing Errors on Your Credit Reports Send documentation of the expungement with the dispute. If the record shouldn’t be reportable, the company is required to remove it.
The same dispute right applies to other common errors: records belonging to someone with a similar name, charges that were dismissed but appear as convictions, and stale entries that were never updated. These mistakes are more common than most people expect.
Checks That Ignore the Usual Limits
Some industries operate under their own background check requirements that bypass consumer reporting rules entirely. Positions in law enforcement, childcare, financial services, healthcare, and transportation security often trigger fingerprint-based FBI checks that pull directly from the government’s criminal history database rather than from a private screening company. Those checks are not subject to FCRA reporting limits at all.
If you’re applying to work at a bank, a school, a nursing home, or an airport, expect the check to reach back to the beginning of your criminal history regardless of state law or how old the conviction is. Federal statutes and regulations specific to those industries require it.
How to See Your Record Before an Employer Does
You can request your FBI criminal history through an Identity History Summary Check. The request requires a completed application, a fingerprint card with all ten fingerprints, and a fee of $12.00 per request as of 2025.5Federal Register. FBI Criminal Justice Information Services Division User Fee Schedule Payment must be made by credit card, certified check, or money order payable to the Treasury of the United States; personal checks and cash are not accepted.6FBI. Identity History Summary Request Checklist
You can also request your state criminal history through your state’s law enforcement agency, usually the state police or bureau of investigation. Fees at the state level typically run from $5 to $50 depending on the state and whether the check is name-based or fingerprint-based. Pulling both records before you start applying gives you a chance to catch errors, confirm whether a sealed record is still being reported, and pursue expungement if you’re eligible. Finding out about a problem at the same moment a hiring manager does is a situation worth avoiding.