Working with a Record
ORC 2953.25 — the order that turns an automatic bar into a decision
A conviction shuts doors two different ways and the difference matters enormously. One is an employer deciding not to hire somebody, which is a choice. The other is a rule of law that bars a person from a job or a license whatever anybody thinks of them, which removes the choice from everyone in the room. Ohio calls the second kind a collateral sanction, and it built a specific order for lifting it.
Who handles this in Ohio: Ohio State Bar Association lawyer referral; and legal aid programs and the state offices, listed in the Ohio directory.
A certificate of qualification for employment does not erase anything. What it does is take the automatic part out: where a collateral sanction would bar a person by operation of law, the certificate lifts that bar so the person is considered on their own circumstances instead. The conviction is still there and the decision is still somebody's to make. It is now a decision rather than a wall.
| The offense | A petition may be filed | Presumed eligible |
|---|---|---|
| The offenseA misdemeanor | A petition may be filedSix months after release from any jail term and all supervision after it, or after final release from every sanction if there was no jail | Presumed eligibleOne year, counted the same way |
| The offenseA felony | A petition may be filedOne year after release from incarceration, or after final release from every other sanction if there was none | Presumed eligibleThree years after release from incarceration and all supervision after it, or after final release from every other sanction |
| The offenseThe court's own clock | A petition may be filedA decision within sixty days of receiving the completed petition and all the information requested, which the court may extend at the petitioner's request | Presumed eligible |
Once the longer period is met, the presumption runs the other way. An applicant who files after the shorter period may be granted a certificate, and one who has also passed the longer period, one year for a misdemeanor or three years for a felony, is rebuttably presumed to be eligible. The petition can be denied where the court establishes by clear and convincing evidence that the person has not been rehabilitated, which is a real burden and it sits on the other side of the table. That is unusual enough in this area to be worth saying plainly: the default answer is yes.
The half that actually gets people hired is about the employer. In a proceeding on a claim against an employer for negligent hiring, a certificate provides immunity for the employer as to that claim where the employer knew of the certificate at the time of the alleged negligence. More broadly, it may be introduced as evidence of due care in hiring, retaining, licensing, leasing to, admitting to a school or program, or otherwise transacting with the holder. Employers refuse people over liability they are imagining. This is the section that answers them.
That protection has a boundary written into it. Where a holder is hired and afterwards demonstrates dangerousness or is convicted of or pleads guilty to a felony, and the employer keeps them on, the employer can be liable in an action about the retention, but only where it is proved by a preponderance that the person with hiring and firing responsibility had actual knowledge of it. The shield covers hiring somebody with a past. It does not cover ignoring a present.
There are restrictions the certificate does not reach, and the section lists them itself rather than leaving it to be discovered. A certificate is also a different thing from sealing a record, which is its own chapter with its own eligibility and its own waiting periods, and the two are not alternatives so much as different tools: one addresses who can see the record, the other addresses what the record automatically does.
“Is this bar a collateral sanction, or is it your policy.”
The petition goes to the court of common pleas of the county where the person lives, or to the designee of the division of parole and community services, and a person who served a prison term or spent time in a department funded program files with that designee. It carries a fifty dollar application fee, and a court may add a local fee of not more than fifty dollars. Federal bars, bars imposed by another state, and conditions attached to a sentence are not collateral sanctions of the kind this section reaches. The list of restrictions the certificate does not lift is in the section and is worth reading before a petition rather than after. The department of rehabilitation and correction publishes the process and the forms, courts add their own local requirements, and a licensed Ohio attorney or a reentry program is who helps somebody through one.
Sources for this section (3)
- ORC 2953.25 — The certificate of qualification for employment, for a person subject to a collateral sanction
- ORC 2953.32 — Sealing or expungement of a conviction, eligibility and waiting periods
- ORC 2953.31 — Sealing and expungement, definitions
Legal information, not legal advice. Verified as of September 2026. Applying it to a particular situation is the work of a licensed Ohio attorney.