Federal grants to automate criminal record expungement, with racial equity reporting.
H.R. 3111 — Fresh Start Act of 2025 · Filed by Laurel Lee (R-FL) · 13 cosponsors · Introduced Apr 30, 2025 · Referred to committee
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What it does
This bill amends the Brady Act to create federal grants helping states modernize their criminal justice data systems to automatically seal or expunge eligible criminal records without requiring individuals to pay fees or take action themselves. States receiving grants must report annually to the Attorney General on how many people's records were expunged, broken down by race, ethnicity, and gender, with the AG publishing this data publicly.
Why we flagged it
The bill's operative mechanism is a grant program to modernize state data systems for automated record expungement, paired with mandatory public reporting on racial equity outcomes. This is straightforward criminal justice reform, not a hidden rider or carve-out.
What the text implies
- Mandatory racial/ethnic/gender disaggregation in reporting may expose disparities in expungement outcomes across states, potentially creating political pressure for further reform or litigation risk for states with stark racial gaps.
- Automatic expungement without individual action removes a gatekeeping step, meaning people with sealed records may not know their records are sealed, potentially creating confusion in background checks or employment verification.
- The bill does not specify funding amounts or appropriations, meaning the grant program's actual impact depends entirely on Congressional appropriations in future budget cycles.
- States must develop plans to obtain missing data within one year, but the bill does not mandate compliance or penalties, so enforcement and data quality remain uncertain.
Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.
Who it affects
The bill removes barriers to record expungement for ordinary people by funding automated systems and eliminating fee requirements, while creating transparency through mandatory public reporting on racial disparities in expungement outcomes. This expands access to a remedy that helps people rebuild their lives after criminal convictions.
Who stands to gain
- software and data infrastructure vendors serving state criminal justice systems
- consulting firms specializing in criminal justice data modernization
Named in the bill
Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, Attorney General, State criminal justice agencies, MHVYF, FBIN, PWR, ODFL, FINMF
Where it stands
13 cosponsors: 9 Democrats, 4 Republicans.
- Apr 30, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in House”
- Apr 30, 2025 — Referred to House Committee on the Judiciary · Congress.gov: “Referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
2 lobbying clients named this bill on 2 disclosure filings across 2 quarters, Dec 2025 to Mar 2026. Those filings disclosed $30,000 in lobbying spend. A filing names 20 bills on average, so that figure is what each filing reported, not a share belonging to this bill.
More lobbying clients named this bill than 41% of bills with at least one filing.
Laurel Lee, the sponsor, reported $910,000 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.
- Due Process Institute — $15,000 on 1 filing
- National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (nacdl) — $15,000 on 1 filing
Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jun 1, 2026. A filing shows who paid to lobby on a bill it names, not what changed.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (2,409 characters) on Aug 21, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,222 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Dec 2025 to Mar 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jun 1, 2026 · page rendered 2026-10-20.
“Federal grants to automate criminal record expungement, with racial equity reporting.” QuorumCivic. https://share.quorumcivic.app/bill/119/hr3111 Report an error
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