Attorney urges SJC to allow narrow juvenile expungement to shield a vacated order’s lifelong harms

BOSTON — At oral argument in SJC-13854, Attorney Amy DiDonna told the Supreme Judicial Court that a nine-year-old whose juvenile protective order was later vacated will suffer ‘‘punishment . . . for the remainder of his life’’ because the record remains accessible in background- and registry-check systems.

DiDonna, representing the defendant-appellant who she said she would refer to in argument as John Doe, asked the court to recognize a narrow equitable authority for juvenile courts to provide relief beyond vacatur so that young litigants do not carry permanent civil disabilities from records that persist in background databases.

The request collided with the court’s existing framework. An associate justice pressed DiDonna to point to statutory or common-law authority that would permit expungement absent the high fraud-on-the-court standard the court has relied on in prior cases. "So if we don't have fraud here, what authorizes... ?" the justice asked, framing much of the issue as one of statute and precedent.

DiDonna acknowledged she was asking the court to do something new but argued the distinction between inherent authority — which she described as protective of the court’s institutional integrity — and equitable authority — which she said is litigant‑focused — supported a narrow juvenile exception. She said juvenile courts already exercise different, developmentally informed equitable powers and that a targeted rule could protect children without extending to unrelated adult dockets.

Counsel detailed concrete collateral consequences she said result from retained records: barriers in employment and volunteer screenings, limits on foster-care or adoption clearances, and entries in domestic-violence reporting systems and background databases that are queried for housing, coaching and employment. "This is a nine-year-old child who simply didn't do it," DiDonna told the court; "punishing a child for something he didn't do for the remainder of his life" framed her appeal for narrow relief.

The bench voiced concern about creating a broad rule that would apply to vacated orders generally and asked whether lack of evidence or vacatur should suffice as a limiting principle across adult and juvenile dockets. DiDonna proposed a narrowly tailored carve‑out — for juveniles determined by the juvenile court not to have committed the alleged conduct — rather than a blanket rule for all vacated orders, and referenced Vaccaro-era precedent as a doctrinal touchstone for how the court might limit any new exception.

The argument also explored practical mechanics: justices noted the statute assigns probation record-retention duties and asked whether the legislature’s retention mandate foreclosed judicially ordered expungement. DiDonna said the juvenile court there had vacated the order to inception but that external reporting systems and background-check aggregators nevertheless retained entries, producing the collateral harms she described.

No decision was announced at the conclusion of argument. The case will be considered by the justices and any subsequent order or opinion will appear on the court’s docket.