diff --git a/DESCRIPTION b/DESCRIPTION
index 323b5efb..f752c7ce 100644
--- a/DESCRIPTION
+++ b/DESCRIPTION
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 Package: SeuratObject
 Title: Data Structures for Single Cell Data
-Version: 5.0.99.9011
+Version: 5.0.99.9012
 Authors@R: c(
   person(given = 'Paul', family = 'Hoffman', email = 'hoff0792@alumni.umn.edu', role = 'aut', comment = c(ORCID = '0000-0002-7693-8957')),
   person(given = 'Rahul', family = 'Satija', email = 'seurat@nygenome.org', role = c('aut', 'cre'), comment = c(ORCID = '0000-0001-9448-8833')),
diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index 0af60634..96bac676 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -1,6 +1,7 @@
 # Unreleased
 
 ## Changes:
+- Update `UpdateSeuratObject` to call `droplevels` on the input's cell-level `meta.data` slot (#247)
 - Drop `Seurat` from `Enhances`; update `.IsFutureSeurat` to avoid calling `requireNamespace('Seurat', ...)` (#250)
 - Update the `VariableFeatures.StdAssay` setter to apply a speedup (#240)
 - Add `SVFInfo.Assay5` & `SpatiallyVariableFeatures.Assay5` (#242)
diff --git a/R/seurat.R b/R/seurat.R
index fb45a0a2..937f8223 100644
--- a/R/seurat.R
+++ b/R/seurat.R
@@ -873,7 +873,7 @@ UpdateSeuratObject <- function(object) {
         misc = object@misc %||% list(),
         active.ident = object@ident,
         reductions = new.dr,
-        meta.data = object@meta.data,
+        meta.data = droplevels(object@meta.data),
         tools = list()
       )
       # Run CalcN