Expunction or nondisclosure: a Texas decision tree.

The question is what happened to the case, not what you were charged with

People come in asking whether a particular offense can be cleared. That is the wrong first question. Texas ties both remedies to the disposition. A dismissed felony can be expunged. A Class B misdemeanor that ended in deferred adjudication cannot be, no matter how minor it looks.

So start with the disposition, and the rest of the analysis follows.

The decision tree

Work through these in order. The first one that matches is your answer.

1. Convicted at trial or by plea, with a sentence? Expunction is unavailable. Nondisclosure may be available for some misdemeanors. Skip to the nondisclosure section.
2. Deferred adjudication community supervision? Expunction is unavailable unless the offense was a Class C misdemeanor. Nondisclosure is the remedy.
3. Straight community supervision after a conviction? Expunction is unavailable. A narrow set of misdemeanors qualify for nondisclosure.
4. Acquitted at trial? Expunction, and the court is supposed to act quickly.
5. Pardoned? Expunction.
6. Charge dismissed, no-billed, or never filed at all, with no community supervision? Expunction, subject to the timing rules below.

The line between item 2 and item 6 is where most of the confusion lives. Deferred adjudication is not a conviction. Article 42A.111(c) of the Code of Criminal Procedure says a discharge and dismissal after deferred adjudication may not be treated as a conviction for purposes of disqualifications imposed by law. That helps in a lot of places. It does not help here.

Expunction eligibility runs through Article 55A.051, which sets three separate requirements: the person has been released, the charge has not resulted in a final conviction and is no longer pending, and there was no court-ordered community supervision under Chapter 42A for the offense, other than for a Class C misdemeanor. Deferred adjudication satisfies the second requirement and fails the third. Article 42A.001(1)(A) defines community supervision to include a period during which criminal proceedings are deferred without an adjudication of guilt. That is deferred adjudication by description.

The Texas Supreme Court applied the same reading in Ex parte E.H., 602 S.W.3d 486 (Tex. 2020). The Court granted expunction there, but only because the statute of conviction had already been held facially unconstitutional and the supervision order was void from the start. The general rule survived intact: expunction is a statutory privilege, its requirements are mandatory, and courts have no equitable power to relax them.

Expunction: Chapter 55A

Chapter 55 was repealed and replaced by Chapter 55A effective January 1, 2025. The change came from House Bill 4504 in 2023 and was a reorganization rather than a rewrite. If you are reading an article, a form, or a court website that still cites Article 55.01, it predates the current numbering.

An expunction order directs agencies to destroy or return the records. Under Article 55A.401, once the order is final you may deny the arrest ever happened, except when testifying under oath in a criminal proceeding.

If you were acquitted or pardoned

Article 55A.002 covers acquittal at trial. Article 55A.003 covers a pardon or other relief granted on the ground of actual innocence. Article 55A.004 covers a pardon granted for some other reason.

Acquittal and actual-innocence pardons move on a 30-day clock under Articles 55A.201 and 55A.202. The acquittal route still requires a request from you or from the prosecutor with your consent, so nothing happens automatically if nobody asks. Article 55A.201(b) requires the trial court to advise an acquitted person of the right to expunction.

One limit applies to acquittals. Under Article 55A.151, a court may not expunge an arrest for an offense you were acquitted of if that offense arose out of a criminal episode as defined by Section 3.01 of the Penal Code and you were convicted of, or remain subject to prosecution for, another offense from that same episode.

If no charge was ever filed

Article 55A.052 governs the case where no indictment or information was presented. The waiting period runs from the date of arrest.

Article 55A.052(a)(4) is the exception that gets overlooked. If the prosecutor certifies that the records are not needed for any criminal investigation or prosecution, including one involving somebody else, the waiting period drops away. Asking for that certification costs a phone call and a letter, and it is worth doing before waiting three years on a felony arrest.

There is a tradeoff. Article 55A.302(c) says that when the expunction rests on one of the waiting periods rather than on the prosecutor's certification, the court shall permit the law enforcement agency and the prosecutor to retain the records.

If the charge was filed and then dismissed

Article 55A.053 covers dismissal or quashing of an indictment or information. It is narrower than people expect. The court has to find one of these:

• completion of a veterans treatment court program under Chapter 124 of the Government Code;
• completion of a mental health court program under Chapter 125 of the Government Code;
• completion of a pretrial intervention program under Section 76.011 of the Government Code;
• that the charge was presented because of mistake, false information, or a similar reason indicating an absence of probable cause at the time of dismissal; or
• that the indictment or information was void.

The veterans court and mental health court grounds may each be used once in a lifetime, and each requires an affidavit saying so.

A dismissal that does not fit one of those findings is not dead. It routes back to Article 55A.052, because a dismissed charge that was never presented by indictment or information still qualifies there, and to Article 55A.054, which grants expunction when the limitations period for the offense has expired. Neither Article 55A.053 nor Article 55A.054 imposes a waiting period of its own. The waiting periods live only in Article 55A.052.

What changed in 2025

Senate Bill 1667 from the 89th Legislature amended the expunction procedure articles effective September 1, 2025. The practical changes: petitions must now list agency email addresses as well as physical addresses, an agency may not be listed more than once, hearings are set no earlier than the 30th day after filing, the clerk sends a copy of the petition rather than just notice, and district clerks maintain a list of agency email addresses on their websites. Article 55A.356 now has the clerk destroy the records on the first anniversary of the order while retaining the order itself confidentially.

The eligibility rules and the waiting periods were not touched.

Nondisclosure: Government Code Chapter 411, Subchapter E-1

An order of nondisclosure seals the record from public view. It does not destroy anything. Which section applies depends on how the case ended and what the offense was.

Two points about that table are worth stating plainly, because a lot of published summaries get them backwards.

Only Section 411.072 is automatic. The court issues that order without a petition, and you pay the clerk a $28 fee. Every other route requires a petition, notice to the State, and an opportunity for a hearing.

Misdemeanor DWI is not on the automatic route. Section 411.072(a)(1)(A)(i) expressly excludes offenses under Sections 49.04 and 49.06 of the Penal Code. A first-time misdemeanor DWI deferred adjudication goes through Section 411.0726, which requires a petition and a finding that the order is in the best interest of justice. Sections 411.0726(e), 411.0731(e), and 411.0736(e) each let the prosecutor defeat the petition by showing the offense resulted in a collision involving another person, including a passenger in the petitioner's own vehicle.

The conditions that apply to every route

Section 411.074(a) sets the clean period. From the day the court pronounced sentence or placed you on supervision, and through any applicable waiting period, you must not be convicted of or placed on deferred adjudication for any offense other than a traffic offense punishable by fine only.

Section 411.074(b) lists the offenses that bar nondisclosure outright, whether they are the offense you want sealed or a prior:

• an offense requiring sex offender registration under Chapter 62 of the Code of Criminal Procedure;
• aggravated kidnapping under Section 20.04 of the Penal Code;
• murder, capital murder, trafficking of persons, continuous trafficking, injury to a child, elderly individual, or disabled individual, abandoning or endangering a child, elderly individual, or disabled individual, violation of certain court orders, repeated violation of those orders, and stalking, under Sections 19.02, 19.03, 20A.02, 20A.03, 22.04, 22.041, 25.07, 25.072, and 42.072 of the Penal Code;
• any other offense involving family violence as defined by Section 71.004 of the Family Code.

The bar also applies if the court makes an affirmative finding of family violence in the case you want sealed.

Most routes carry a further condition inside their own section: you must never have been previously convicted of or placed on deferred adjudication for anything other than a fine-only traffic offense. Section 411.0725(c) is the exception. A person may petition under that section regardless of prior convictions or deferred adjudications.

Side by side

What a sealed record still reaches

Section 411.0765(b) lists the agencies that may receive nondisclosed criminal history information for noncriminal-justice purposes. The list runs past thirty entries and includes the State Board for Educator Certification, school districts and private schools, the Texas Medical Board, the Board of Law Examiners, the State Bar of Texas, the Texas Board of Nursing, the Department of Family and Protective Services, the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, the Health and Human Services Commission, public and nonprofit hospitals, municipal and volunteer fire departments, the Texas Department of Insurance, the Texas State Board of Pharmacy, and banks and other regulated financial institutions hiring their own employees and contractors.

Section 411.0775 adds that a sealed conviction may still be admitted into evidence in a later criminal trial where the rules of evidence allow it, and may still be disclosed to a prosecutor for a criminal justice purpose.

If your goal is a nursing license, a teaching certificate, a bar card, or a job at a hospital or a bank, nondisclosure will not hide the case from the decisionmaker. It will hide it from a landlord, a general employer running a commercial background check, and anyone searching public court records.

Where people go wrong

Assuming deferred adjudication leads to expunction. It is the single most common misunderstanding in this area, and the reason is that the plea paperwork emphasizes that deferred is not a conviction. That is true and it is beside the point for Chapter 55A.

Waiting on a felony arrest for three years without asking the prosecutor. Article 55A.052(a)(4) exists. Use it.

Filing under Article 55A.053 when the dismissal does not fit one of the five findings. The petition fails on its own terms. The same dismissal often qualifies under Article 55A.052 or Article 55A.054 instead.

Treating a Class C deferred like every other deferred. Article 55A.051(3) carves out Class C misdemeanors from the community supervision bar, and fine-only cases proceed by complaint rather than by indictment or information, which puts them inside Article 55A.052 on their face.

Sealing a record and then applying somewhere on the Section 411.0765(b) list. Check the list before deciding whether a nondisclosure petition solves the problem you actually have.

Getting the analysis right the first time

Both remedies are one-shot. An expunction petition denied on eligibility grounds is time and filing fees spent for nothing, and it does not create a second chance later. The eligibility review is the part worth doing carefully, and it usually takes a copy of the judgment or the dismissal order plus the arrest record.

The record clearing page has current flat fees and what each one covers. County filing fees are separate and are set by the county rather than by these statutes.