Court-ordered sealing of criminal history records

Plain-language summary

This is Florida's court-ordered sealing statute. Sealing makes your record confidential; it is not destroyed. Courts and criminal justice agencies keep access, but the public loses it. With specific exceptions, you may lawfully deny the record exists.

The process mirrors expungement's, minus one step. First, FDLE must issue a certificate of eligibility. The statute sets what the application takes: a certified disposition of your case and a $75 processing fee paid to FDLE — no statement from the state attorney, which only expungement requires. FDLE's own instructions add a fingerprint card, taken by law enforcement. Certificate in hand, you petition the court. The statute says "a court of competent jurisdiction"; in practice, file in the county where your original case was filed — that court already has your case file, so it can take up the petition directly. The judge may grant or deny it.

Sealing's test is broader than expungement's in one key way: it covers a case where adjudication was withheld. You were not convicted, but the case did not end in a dismissal either. That middle ground is what sealing exists for. The disqualifying-offense list in section 943.0584 still applies, and so does the whole-record test: if a Florida court has ever adjudicated you guilty of a crime — or, when you were a juvenile, adjudicated you delinquent for a felony or certain misdemeanors — you do not qualify. You must be past supervision. And a sealing or expunction of any record before bars this one; each order covers one arrest, in one proceeding.

The exceptions to lawful denial are specific, and worth knowing. Certain job and license applications keep their right to the truth — work with children, the elderly, or disabled persons, and criminal justice jobs among them. And after 10 years sealed, a record may qualify for court-ordered expungement under section 943.0585.