Your Old Marijuana Conviction May Already Be Expunged in New York: What the MRTA Actually Cleared

Someone applies for an apartment or a job years after an old marijuana possession charge, braces for the background check to bring it up, and either gets denied over something they assumed would follow them forever, or never finds out that it was already gone. Both outcomes trace back to the same gap: New York cleared a large number of marijuana convictions automatically, starting in 2021, and never mailed a single notice to the people it affected.

What the MRTA actually did

The Marihuana Regulation and Taxation Act took effect March 31, 2021. It didn't just legalize limited possession going forward. It rewrote the penal law itself, repealing the old marijuana offenses under Penal Law Article 221 and replacing them with new cannabis provisions under Penal Law Article 222, according to the New York Courts CourtHelp guidance on cannabis and expungement. Certain convictions under both the old and new statutes are now automatically expunged, meaning the arrest, the court case, and the conviction are treated as though none of it happened. That is a stronger outcome than sealing. A sealed record still exists and can be viewed by specific agencies under specific circumstances. An expunged record, under the definition in CPL 1.20(45), is wiped from the ordinary background check entirely.

Which convictions actually qualify

Per the same CourtHelp guidance, the following convictions are automatically expunged without anyone filing anything: PL 221.05, 221.10, 221.15, 221.20, 221.35, and 221.40 (the old unlawful possession, criminal possession, and criminal sale of marihuana charges), along with their replacements under the new law, PL 222.10, 222.15, 222.25, and 222.45. If a court finds that concentrated cannabis, meaning hashish, was the only controlled substance involved in a case, three additional charges qualify too: PL 240.36 (loitering in the first degree), and PL 220.03 and 220.06 (criminal possession of a controlled substance in the seventh and fifth degrees). Convictions that don't fall on that list, including cases that mixed a marijuana charge with an unrelated offense, are not touched by the automatic process. Only the eligible marijuana or cannabis charge inside a mixed case gets expunged; anything else on the record stays exactly as it was.

The timeline, and why nobody gets a letter

Convictions under the old Article 221 offenses were suppressed immediately, meaning they stopped showing up on background checks run through the courts or the Division of Criminal Justice Services, even before the formal expungement paperwork caught up. For everything else on the eligible list, the same CourtHelp page states the courts had up to two years to finish the work. The Attorney General's brochure adds a detail that explains a lot of confused searches: for the newer cannabis provisions, courts and DCJS had until March 31, 2023 to finish expunging eligible records, and "you will not receive a notice that your record has been expunged." Nobody is deliberately hiding this from anyone. It's simply built to run in the background, on the government's own paperwork timeline, with no requirement to ever tell the person it happened to.

If a conviction doesn't qualify automatically

For marijuana or cannabis convictions that fall outside the automatically expunged list, there's still a path, but it requires action. CPL § 440.46-a lets a person petition the court that handled the original conviction to vacate it, dismiss or reduce the charge, or reduce the sentence, using a form filed with that court. The statute goes further than most post-conviction motions: once someone files, the court has to presume the conviction should be vacated unless the opposing party proves otherwise by clear and convincing evidence. That presumption runs in the defendant's favor by design, but it still only helps someone who actually files.

The same brochure names an organization worth knowing about directly: the Case Closed Project at the Legal Aid Society, which helps New Yorkers figure out whether a record qualifies for sealing or expungement at no cost. Anyone unsure which category their record falls into, automatic expungement, a CPL 440.46-a motion, or the separate Clean Slate Act sealing timeline for everything else, doesn't have to guess alone.

A record that's already gone shouldn't still be costing anyone a job or an apartment. Find out which one applies before assuming the old charge is still sitting there.