Maine Governor Janet Mills has vetoed a sweeping criminal-record sealing bill that would have changed what the public can learn from the state’s court dockets, and what employers and landlords can discover with a quick search. The veto is not just a criminal justice story. It is a civics story about what court records are for, who gets to see them, and when secrecy is justified in a system built on open courts.
The bill, L.D. 1911, would have directed the Judicial Branch to automatically seal many misdemeanor conviction records five years after conviction, with a list of exceptions. Mills rejected that approach on practical, public-safety, and constitutional grounds.
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What the bill would have done
L.D. 1911 aimed for a broad, automatic rule: seal records of misdemeanor convictions that Maine law categorizes as Class D and Class E crimes five years after the date of conviction, unless the offense fell within enumerated exceptions.
Two features of that design mattered most.
- Automatic sealing, not petition-based sealing. Eligible records would be sealed whether or not the person ever asked for it.
- Category-based sealing, not case-by-case sealing. The default would be closure by statute rather than an individualized court determination that sealing is justified.
Mills summarized the practical consequence bluntly: the Judicial Branch would have to “review decades of criminal docket files, much of this work by hand” to figure out which files must be removed from public access.
What it would have sealed
To understand the veto, you have to picture what public court records do in daily life. They do not just inform journalists or lawyers. They are a routine tool for people trying to make informed decisions.
Under the bill’s structure, many misdemeanor conviction records would have become inaccessible to the general public after the five-year window, even if:
- the person never requested sealing,
- a victim objected, or
- there was a compelling public interest in leaving the record open.
That is the core tradeoff Mills pointed to: sealing would happen as a matter of course, rather than through a process that weighs the circumstances of a particular case.
Domestic violence
The veto message highlights a specific public-safety flashpoint: as drafted, L.D. 1911 would have mandated sealing for Class D domestic violence assault under 17-A M.R.S. §207-A.
Mills called that outcome “plainly contrary to the public interest,” writing: “While this was apparently an oversight, I cannot endorse legislation that would conceal from public view criminal records of intimate partner violence.”
That line clarifies the veto’s bottom line: a broad, automatic rule can miss high-stakes categories that many people would expect to remain visible.
What would stay public
The bill did not propose sealing everything. It carved out an exceptions list of misdemeanors whose records would have remained publicly accessible. The veto message specifically notes several of them, including:
- Assault (17-A M.R.S. §207)
- Stalking (17-A M.R.S. §210)
- Misdemeanor sex crimes (17-A M.R.S. §§251-285)
- Criminal operating under the influence (29-A M.R.S. §2411)
But the domestic violence assault statute was not included, which meant it would have been treated like a routine misdemeanor for sealing purposes.
First Amendment concerns
One of Mills’ central objections is constitutional: she pointed to First Circuit precedent suggesting that categorically sealing criminal records without a case-by-case review risks violating the First Amendment.
Her veto message frames the transparency argument in institutional terms. A conviction is the product of:
- the Legislature defining prohibited conduct,
- the Executive prosecuting alleged violations, and
- the Judiciary entering judgment.
When the state completes that process, it has exercised coercive power in the name of the people. Mills argued that the process “should be transparent, and records documenting this work should remain available and subject to public scrutiny except where there a compelling public interest exists to justify secrecy, as is true, for example, for juvenile cases.” She cited Globe Newspaper Co. v. Pokaski, 868 F.2d 497, 509 (1st Cir. 1989), and concluded: “It is difficult to see how L.D. 1911 could withstand constitutional review in federal court.”
Separate from Mills’ veto message, the broader legal landscape on whether and when the First Amendment right of access to court records precludes expungement statutes is complicated. Cases often discussed in that context include Commonwealth v. Pon (Mass. 2014) and State v. Rogan (Haw. 2025).
Employers and landlords
Automatic sealing is a policy with uneven downstream effects.
Employers
One likely effect of broad, automatic sealing is that employers who would otherwise rely on court-record searches will have less information available through that channel. Some employers are legally required to screen for certain roles; others screen to manage liability and workplace safety.
Landlords
Housing decisions can be especially sensitive because landlords may consider the safety of existing tenants. If a large share of misdemeanor convictions becomes unavailable to the general public after five years, landlords may adjust screening practices in response.
What a petition process changes
Maine law already permits a person to file a post judgment motion to seal records of certain Class E crimes. See 15 M.R.S. Ch. 310-A. A request-driven process is structurally different from automatic sealing: it allows a court to decide based on the circumstances, rather than requiring the Judicial Branch to seal all eligible records as a matter of course.
Victims and public interest
Mills objected that sealing would occur “without regard for whether victims have objected,” and likewise without regard to whether “a compelling public interest exists in the records remaining accessible.” Those are not minor details. They describe a system that would close records on a schedule, even when there is a specific reason to keep them open.
As a matter of civic design, that shifts the default posture of the courts away from openness and toward secrecy, without a built-in mechanism for individualized objections to be heard before sealing occurs.
Cost and workload
The veto message also emphasizes implementation. According to Mills, the bill would have required hiring seven permanent employees, including two judges, at a cost of over $1 million annually. Only a fraction of this cost was appropriated. The message describes funding as covering only the last three months of the current biennium before becoming part of the baseline budget inherited by the next Legislature.
Mills also wrote that L.D. 1911 would require the Judicial Branch to “review every criminal docket by hand” to determine whether to seal the record, describing “decades of criminal docket files” and substantial manual work.
What happens next
The veto does not end the conversation about second chances or reintegration. It narrows the question: if Maine wants to reduce the lasting consequences of minor convictions, what design choices preserve transparency, protect victims, and reduce constitutional risk?
A revised approach could include tighter offense definitions, clearer victim-notice provisions, and a process that permits individualized judicial determinations rather than categorical closure.
The bigger lesson is one civics students rarely get in a single sentence: privacy is not the only constitutional value at stake in the justice system. Open courts are part of how a free public keeps its government accountable. Changing access to conviction records is not just about personal consequences. It is also about the visibility of government action carried out in the public’s name.