Class A Misdemeanor in Virginia: There Is No Such Class

There is no Class A misdemeanor in Virginia. Va. Code § 18.2-9 classifies misdemeanors into four numbered classes — Class 1, 2, 3 and 4 — and the Code uses no letters anywhere on that scale. If you have been told you face a “Class A misdemeanor,” what you are almost certainly looking at is a Class 1 misdemeanor: up to 12 months in jail and a fine of not more than $2,500.

Why there is no Class A misdemeanor in Virginia

Section 18.2-9 is short and exhaustive. It says misdemeanors are classified “for the purposes of punishment and sentencing, into four classes,” then lists them: Class 1 misdemeanor, Class 2 misdemeanor, Class 3 misdemeanor, Class 4 misdemeanor. That is the complete list. Nothing in the Code of Virginia creates a Class A, Class B or Class C misdemeanor, and no Virginia court imposes a sentence under one.

The letters come from somewhere real, just not from here. Many states — and the federal system — grade misdemeanors by letter, so someone who has read a summary written for a different jurisdiction, or who has moved from one, arrives with the wrong vocabulary. A Virginia summons will name a section number and, if it says a class at all, will say a number.

What a “Class A misdemeanor” translates to in Virginia

A lettered scale usually runs A downwards, with A the most serious. Virginia’s runs 1 upwards in number and downwards in severity, with Class 1 the most serious. So the practical translation is:

If you were told	The Virginia equivalent	Maximum punishment
Class A misdemeanor	Class 1 misdemeanor	Up to 12 months in jail and a fine of not more than $2,500
Class B misdemeanor	Class 2 misdemeanor	Up to 6 months in jail and a fine of not more than $1,000
Class C misdemeanor	Class 3 misdemeanor	Fine of not more than $500
The lowest class	Class 4 misdemeanor	Fine of not more than $250

Treat that as a rough map for reading, not as law. What determines the sentence in a Virginia case is the class the charging section actually assigns, and the range § 18.2-11 attaches to it. If the charge is the most serious kind of Virginia misdemeanor, the page to read is the one on the Class 1 misdemeanor.

The four classes of misdemeanor Virginia does use

Section 18.2-11 sets out the authorized punishments in four clauses, and they are the whole of Virginia’s misdemeanor sentencing law:

Class	Authorized punishment	Jail possible?
Class 1 misdemeanor	Confinement in jail for not more than twelve months and a fine of not more than $2,500, either or both	Yes
Class 2 misdemeanor	Confinement in jail for not more than six months and a fine of not more than $1,000, either or both	Yes
Class 3 misdemeanor	A fine of not more than $500	No
Class 4 misdemeanor	A fine of not more than $250	No

The line between Class 2 and the $500 Class 3 misdemeanor is the one that changes how a case feels: below it, no jail is authorized at all, and a defendant who cannot afford a lawyer will not be given one because none of the possible outcomes is incarceration.

Class I, class one, first-class: the other labels people bring

Several near-misses turn up in the same searches, and none of them is a Virginia class either.

“Class I misdemeanor” is the Roman numeral for one, and it means a Class 1 misdemeanor. Some states write their numbered classes in Roman numerals; Virginia uses Arabic numerals in the Code.

“Class one misdemeanor” and “first-class misdemeanor” are the same thing said in words. Again: Class 1.

“Class V misdemeanor,” “class five misdemeanor,” “class 0 misdemeanor” — none of these exists in Virginia, because the scale stops at four. A search for the “lowest class misdemeanor” in Virginia lands on the Class 4 misdemeanor, a fine of not more than $250 with no jail.

One label that sounds like the bottom of the scale but is not: an unclassified misdemeanor. Where a Virginia misdemeanor section prescribes no punishment or no maximum, the offense is punished as a Class 1 misdemeanor — the most serious class, not the least.

Where the class is actually written down

On the summons, the number that matters is the Code section. Look it up on the Code of Virginia and read to the end of the section: the class is stated there, usually in a sentence beginning “is guilty of” or “shall be punished as.”

Reckless driving is a useful worked example, because it is the criminal traffic charge most drivers meet and because the class is not in the section that defines the conduct. Section 46.2-852 defines the offense — driving “recklessly or at a speed or in a manner so as to endanger the life, limb, or property of any person” — while § 46.2-868 A supplies the class: every reckless driving conviction under that article is a Class 1 misdemeanor. A court hearing the case may also require a driver improvement clinic instead of or in addition to the penalties, and decides whether DMV safe driving points are awarded for it (§ 46.2-505).

And if the summons says “traffic infraction” rather than naming a misdemeanor class, it is not a crime at all: § 18.2-8 puts infractions in a separate category, “not deemed to be criminal in nature.” How all of this fits together is set out in the overview of misdemeanors in Virginia.

Clearing the record does not depend on the class

One more place the lettered vocabulary misleads: nothing about expungement or sealing in Virginia turns on which class the misdemeanor was. Both routes are written for misdemeanors as a category, and what decides them is how the case ended.

Va. Code § 19.2-392.2 allows expungement of police and court records where the defendant was acquitted, where a nolle prosequi was taken, or where the charge was otherwise dismissed — a Class 1 and a Class 4 charge are treated alike. There is no filing fee, and a petitioner with no prior criminal record charged with a misdemeanor is entitled to expungement unless the Commonwealth shows good cause against it.

A conviction cannot be expunged at all. The separate route for a conviction is sealing under § 19.2-392.12, which again reaches a misdemeanor conviction with an offense date on or after 1 January 1986 without regard to class, with no filing fee — but the Commonwealth may object, and no more than two such petitions may be granted in a person’s lifetime.

Where that section does sort, it sorts by offense rather than by class. Subsection L lists the offenses that cannot be sealed under it at all, and several are driving offenses: driving under the influence (§ 18.2-266), refusing a breath or blood test (§ 18.2-268.3) and the commercial-driver equivalents are all on it, while reckless driving is not. Two Class 1 misdemeanors can therefore end up in very different positions, which is the clearest demonstration that the class label is not what the record rules run on. The class-by-class detail, including what a conviction at the top of the scale leaves on a record, is on the Class 1 misdemeanor penalty page.