Your Record Was Expunged. Why Is It Still on Your Background Check?

A judge signed the order. The case was sealed, expunged, or dismissed outright. Then an employer ran a background check and there it was again — the thing a court already took off your record, printed on a report that just cost you a job. (If the case was dismissed rather than expunged, a dismissed charge still on a background check covers that version.)

This happens more often than it should, and it is worth understanding why, because the answer determines whether you have a claim.

Do expunged records show up on background checks?

They are not supposed to, but it happens. An expungement removes or restricts the record in the court’s files. It does not remove it from the databases private screening companies keep, and those databases are where an employment or tenant background check comes from. So a case a court cleared can still appear on a report, sometimes years after the order.

When it does, the problem is the report, not your expungement. The Fair Credit Reporting Act gives you two things to work with: the right to see the report before an employer acts on it, and the right to have the error reinvestigated and removed.

The right to see it first. An employer that intends to turn you down based in whole or in part on a background report must first give you a copy of the report and a written summary of your rights (15 U.S.C. § 1681b(b)(3)(A)). That copy is often how people learn the expunged case is still there.

What an expungement actually does

An expungement or sealing order works on the government’s copy of the record. It tells the court, and usually the state police, to remove or restrict the record.

It does not reach into the private databases. Background check companies buy court records in bulk, sometimes years in advance, and store them. When a court seals a case, that company is not automatically told. If nobody refreshes the data, the old entry sits in the file and keeps getting sold.

That gap is where the legal problem lives — not in the expungement, which worked, but in what the reporting company did afterward.

What the law requires of the company

The Fair Credit Reporting Act puts the burden on the company that sells the report, not on you.

Under 15 U.S.C. § 1681e(b), a company preparing a consumer report must “follow reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy of the information concerning the individual about whom the report relates.” Selling a record a court has already sealed is difficult to square with that standard.

There is a second rule that applies specifically to employment screening. Under 15 U.S.C. § 1681k, a company reporting public record information likely to hurt your chances of getting a job must either maintain “strict procedures” to ensure the information is “complete and up to date,” or notify you at the time it reports the information so you can respond.

How expunged records end up on reports

The cases being filed in federal court this year describe the same few patterns:

• The conviction is reported as a conviction. The report lists the charge and the outcome, and says nothing about the order that expunged it. To an employer, it reads as a current criminal record.
• The court sealed the case after the company last updated its data. The company bought the record in bulk before the order, never refreshed it, and kept selling the old entry.
• The order was sent, and the record stayed. A dispute with the expungement order attached comes back “verified,” and the next report shows the same case.

The last pattern is why the order matters. Send a certified copy with every dispute, so the company cannot say it did not know.

The seven-year rule, and its exception

There is a time limit in the statute, and it is narrower than most people expect.

Under 15 U.S.C. § 1681c(a)(2), records of arrest generally cannot be reported once they are more than seven years old from the date of entry, or after the governing statute of limitations has run, whichever is longer. Under § 1681c(a)(5), the same seven-year cutoff applies to other adverse items — but that subsection contains an explicit carve-out for “records of convictions of crimes.”

So a conviction has no time limit under this section. It can be reported indefinitely. An arrest that did not lead to a conviction generally cannot be reported after that period. These time limits do not apply to a report for a job paying $75,000 a year or more, or for credit or life insurance of $150,000 or more (15 U.S.C. § 1681c(b)).

This matters because it tells you which argument you are making. If the entry is an old arrest, the age of it may be enough. If it is a conviction that a court later expunged, the argument is accuracy: the company is reporting something that no longer exists in the public record it claims to be drawing from.

What to do

• Get the report. The employer that turned you down has to tell you which company supplied it. Ask that company for your file directly.
• Get the court order. A certified copy of the expungement or sealing order is the single document that settles the question.
• Dispute it in writing, and send the order with it. When you dispute, the company must conduct a reasonable reinvestigation free of charge and generally finish within 30 days, under 15 U.S.C. § 1681i. If the item is inaccurate, incomplete, or cannot be verified, the statute says it has to come out.
• Keep everything. Dates, tracking numbers, the report itself, the rejection. If the entry stays on the report after you have sent proof that a court removed it, that paper trail is the case.

Common questions

Do expunged records show up on background checks?
They are not supposed to show up on a report from a screening company, but they can. An expungement clears the court’s records, not the private databases screening companies keep. If an expunged case appears on your report, dispute it with a copy of the order.

Can a background check company report an expunged conviction?
A screening company must follow reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy of what it reports (15 U.S.C. § 1681e(b)). Reporting a case a court has expunged, as though it were still on the record, is difficult to square with that standard.

Will an employer tell me if an expunged record showed up?
If an employer intends to turn you down based in whole or in part on a background report, it must first give you a copy of the report and a written summary of your rights (15 U.S.C. § 1681b(b)(3)(A)).

How do I get an expunged record removed from a background check?
Dispute it in writing with the company that issued the report, and include a certified copy of the expungement or sealing order. The company must reinvestigate free of charge and generally finish within 30 days (15 U.S.C. § 1681i).

How long can an arrest stay on a background check?
An arrest that did not lead to a conviction generally cannot be reported once it is more than seven years old, or after the statute of limitations has run, whichever is longer. A conviction has no time limit under that rule, which is why an expunged conviction is a question of accuracy. These limits do not apply to a job paying $75,000 a year or more.

When it becomes a lawsuit

The Fair Credit Reporting Act gives you a private right of action. If a screening company kept reporting a sealed record after you told it what happened and gave it the order, that is the point at which a dispute becomes a claim.

In a matter I filed in 2023, LexisNexis kept reporting an expunged record a year after the order, and called it accurate when shown the order. More examples are on the cases I have filed.

If you are working through this now, our page on background check errors covers the wider set of mistakes these reports contain, and the step-by-step dispute guide walks through the letter itself. If the report has already cost you a job, what a background check lawyer does and whether you can sue the screening company are the next two questions.

Admitted in Pennsylvania and New Jersey; available to appear pro hac vice in other federal courts. You pay nothing unless we win.

Sources: 15 U.S.C. §§ 1681b, 1681c, 1681e, 1681i, 1681k (United States Code); Federal Trade Commission, What Employment Background Screening Companies Need to Know About the Fair Credit Reporting Act.