Federal grants to automate criminal record clearing—no fees, no paperwork.
S. 2590 — Fresh Start Act of 2025 · Filed by Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) · 2 cosponsors · Introduced Jul 31, 2025 · Referred to committee
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What it does
This bill creates a federal grant program offering up to $5 million per state to modernize criminal justice data systems so that criminal records are automatically expunged or sealed for eligible individuals without requiring them to file paperwork or pay fees. States with existing automatic expungement laws can apply; the federal government covers up to 75% of implementation costs, and states must report annually on how many people benefit, broken down by race, ethnicity, and gender.
Why we flagged it
The bill's operative mechanism is a straightforward federal grant program to fund state infrastructure for automatic record expungement. It is not a tax measure, deregulation, or subsidy to private industry—it is a public investment in criminal justice system modernization with explicit equity reporting requirements.
What the text implies
- Automatic expungement without individual action may benefit individuals unaware of their eligibility or unable to navigate legal processes, but also removes individual agency and control over timing—some may prefer to delay expungement for personal reasons.
- Disaggregated reporting by race, ethnicity, and gender creates a public record of disparate impact in criminal justice outcomes, potentially exposing systemic bias but also creating data that could be misused if not carefully contextualized.
- The 75% federal cost-share requirement means states must fund 25% of implementation from their own budgets, which may create unequal adoption across wealthy vs. resource-constrained states.
- Automatic expungement may accelerate record clearing for individuals who would otherwise face delays in manual petition systems, but the bill does not address whether sealed records remain accessible to law enforcement, employers in certain sectors, or other entities with statutory carve-outs.
Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.
Who it affects
Ordinary citizens with eligible criminal records gain a concrete right to automatic record clearing without bureaucratic burden or cost, removing barriers to employment, housing, and social reintegration. The transparency requirements (disaggregated reporting by race/ethnicity) create public accountability for disparate impact, strengthening democratic oversight of criminal justice outcomes.
Who stands to gain
- software and IT services vendors contracted by states to build/upgrade criminal justice data systems
- criminal justice technology consultants and systems integrators
Named in the bill
Attorney General, States, Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, criminal justice data infrastructure, record expungement, record sealing
Where it stands
2 cosponsors: 2 Democrats.
- Jul 31, 2025 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in Senate”
- Jul 31, 2025 — Referred to Senate Committee on the Judiciary · Congress.gov: “Read twice and referred to the 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
1 lobbying clients named this bill on 1 disclosure filings across 1 quarter, Mar 2026 to Mar 2026. Those filings disclosed $15,000 in lobbying spend. A filing names 28 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 0% of bills with at least one filing.
Chris Van Hollen, the sponsor, reported $81,250 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.
- Due Process Institute — $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 (4,185 characters) on Aug 18, 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 Mar 2026 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 clearing—no fees, no paperwork.” QuorumCivic. https://share.quorumcivic.app/bill/119/s2590 Report an error
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