Ban the Box: Expungement Minnesota
If you have a record, the job search does not start on a level field. You know it before you fill in the first line. Minnesota law does not pretend otherwise, but it does something specific and useful: it changes when the conversation about your past is allowed to happen, and it has already wiped out a large number of cannabis records outright.
What follows is what the law actually says, what it does not do, and where the cannabis expungement work currently stands. This is written for workers, not for HR departments.
What ban the box actually means in Minnesota
The name comes from the checkbox that used to sit near the bottom of every paper application: have you ever been convicted of a crime? Minnesota removed that box for public employers in 2009 and for private employers on January 1, 2014.
The rule lives at Minn. Stat. § 364.021. An employer may not inquire into, consider, or require you to disclose your criminal record until one of two things happens:
- You have been selected for an interview, or
- If the employer does not conduct interviews, a conditional offer of employment has been made.
The point is sequencing. You get evaluated on whether you can do the job before your record enters the room. That is not a small thing when the alternative is being screened out by a checkbox before a human ever reads your experience.
There is a real exception. Employers with a statutory duty to run a criminal background check or to weigh criminal history during hiring are outside the rule. Certain healthcare, childcare, education, and transportation roles fall here. If an application in one of those fields asks up front, that may be lawful.
Chapter 364 also carries a second protection that gets less attention than the box itself. An employer generally cannot disqualify you from a job solely because of a prior conviction unless the offense relates directly to the position, and the employer is supposed to consider evidence of rehabilitation. The box is the famous part. The direct-relationship requirement is the part that matters after the interview.
What ban the box does not do
It is worth being blunt, because the misunderstanding here costs people interviews they could have prepared for.
- It does not seal or erase anything. Ban the box and expungement are separate systems that happen to be talked about together.
- It does not stop a background check. After the interview or conditional offer, an employer can run one.
- It does not hide arrests or charges that appear on a consumer background report from a private screening company.
- It does not guarantee the job. It guarantees a sequence.
Some cities go further than the state floor. Minneapolis has its own labor standards ordinances and expanded protections for people with criminal histories. If you work inside city limits, check the city rules as well as the state ones, because the more protective standard is the one that governs.
Cannabis expungement: what has already happened
The 2023 Adult-Use Cannabis Act did not just legalize possession. It ordered the state to go back and clean up records for conduct that is no longer a crime.
According to the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, cannabis-related petty misdemeanor and misdemeanor records, along with felony-level records that were dismissed or otherwise resolved in the person’s favor, were expunged from the state’s Criminal History System in May 2024. The BCA has said it would sweep the system again in 2026 to catch records that were still moving through the courts when the first pass ran.
Two details matter enormously for job seekers and almost nobody knows them:
- You were not notified. The BCA notifies law enforcement and prosecutors. It is not required to notify you. Your record may already be clean and you may still be answering questions as though it is not.
- Not everything qualified. Automatic expungement covered a defined set of offenses. Larger felony cases went to a separate process.
Before your next application, check. You can look up your own case status through Minnesota Court Records Online, and you can request a copy of your criminal history through the Minnesota Public Criminal History Search. Ten minutes of checking beats a year of assuming.
The felony review is still running
Felony cannabis convictions were not automatically expunged. They go to the Cannabis Expungement Board, an independent body created by the same 2023 law, which reviews cases individually to decide whether a conviction should be vacated and expunged or whether the person should be resentenced to a lesser offense.
The volume is the story here. State materials have put the pool of gross misdemeanor and felony cases identified for review in the tens of thousands, with roughly 98,000 cases flagged by the BCA for board review. Cases involving violence, weapons, or threats are excluded by statute. This is a multi-year process, and the board operates until the work is done.
If you are in that pool, you do not need to file anything for the board to reach your case. What you can do is keep your own copy of your court records and know your case number, so that when a background check surfaces something outdated you can point to what has actually happened since.
The out-of-state problem nobody warns you about
An expungement in Minnesota does not necessarily follow you across the state line. Minnesota participates in the National Crime Prevention and Privacy Compact, which generally keeps records visible in other states unless a petition is filed and a court orders the record held at the BCA to be sealed.
Practically, that means a national background check run by an employer in another state can still turn up something your Minnesota record no longer shows. If you are applying to a multi-state operator, or to a company that runs a national screen, this is worth raising proactively rather than being surprised by it. Free legal information on the process is available through LawHelpMN.
If a background check comes back and you lose the offer
When an employer uses a third-party screening company, the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act adds steps that exist specifically to protect you. Before taking adverse action based on the report, the employer must give you a pre-adverse action notice with a copy of the report and a summary of your rights, and give you a reasonable window to dispute what is in it.
Use that window. Background reports contain errors constantly: records that belong to someone with a similar name, charges shown as convictions, cases that were dismissed, and offenses that have since been expunged but were pulled from a stale database. The dispute process is free and the reporting agency has to investigate.
If the application asks anyway
It still happens, usually through an old application template nobody has updated rather than a deliberate decision. The Minnesota Department of Human Rights enforces ban the box for private employers and reviews applications submitted to it, working with employers to bring non-compliant forms into line.
You can submit an application for review through the MDHR Ban the Box submission form, and submissions can be made confidentially. Violations carry penalties under Chapter 364 that scale with employer size.
Why this sits on a payroll company’s website
Because cannabis is one of the few industries in Minnesota where a past cannabis conviction and a current job application land on the same desk, and because the paperwork side of hiring is where these rules either get followed or quietly ignored. Roll With Paid. handles onboarding and employment documentation for cannabis operators, dispensaries, cultivators, and other high-risk employers, and part of doing that well is making sure the intake process does not ask questions it is not allowed to ask yet.
More for workers on our Employee Resources page, including your rights as a cannabis worker in Minnesota and how to read your pay stub. Employers rethinking their hiring paperwork may want our post on HR compliance for dispensaries and cultivators.
Frequently asked questions
When can a Minnesota employer ask about my criminal record?
Not on the initial application. Under Minn. Stat. § 364.021, the question has to wait until you have been selected for an interview or, if the employer does not interview, until a conditional offer has been made. A narrow set of employers with a statutory duty to run background checks are exempt.
Was my cannabis conviction automatically expunged?
If it was a petty misdemeanor or misdemeanor, or a felony-level case dismissed or resolved in your favor, it was expunged from the BCA’s Criminal History System in May 2024. Felony convictions are being reviewed case by case by the Cannabis Expungement Board, and that work is ongoing.
Will I be notified if my record is expunged?
No. The BCA notifies law enforcement and prosecutors but is not required to notify you. Check your own status through Minnesota Court Records Online or by requesting your criminal history.
Does an expunged Minnesota record still show up in other states?
It can. Minnesota is part of the National Crime Prevention and Privacy Compact, which generally keeps records visible out of state unless a petition is filed and a court orders the BCA record sealed.
What do I do if an application asks about convictions up front?
Submit it to the Minnesota Department of Human Rights through its Ban the Box form. Submissions can be confidential, and the department works with employers to correct non-compliant applications.
Roll With Paid. is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice. This article summarizes Minnesota and federal law as of August 2026 and is intended as general information. Laws change and individual situations vary. For advice about your own record or your own case, talk to a licensed attorney or a legal aid organization.