You can confirm whether an eviction filing or judgment is visible in two places: the court where the landlord filed the case and the tenant screening databases that pull from it. Courts and screening companies don't always show the same thing, and a court may seal a record while a screening company still reports it on a background check. This guide shows you how to search both systems. It also explains how long records persist in each layer and how to correct a record that's wrong or should no longer appear.
Are evictions public record?
Yes. Courts treat eviction filings and judgments as presumptively public court records across the United States unless a state restriction applies. The Eviction Lab at Princeton builds its national dataset from 'formal eviction records from all 50 states and the District of Columbia,' reflecting the public-record baseline. The National Housing Law Project puts it plainly: a landlord creates a public record each time it files an eviction case in court, and the filing record remains available even where the court later dismisses the case.
As a rental property owner, eviction records are the raw material of tenant screening — a core tool for filtering out applicants with a history of nonpayment or prior evictions. Roughly 90% of landlords use tenant screening reports that commonly include eviction records, and a background check that surfaces a filing can feel like a clear red flag. But a filing alone — one that ended in a dismissal or a tenant win — is weak evidence of actual risk. Knowing where eviction records come from, and what they do and don't show, tells you how much weight to give any screening hit before it influences your decision.
State legislatures have created a growing list of exceptions to the public-by-default rule. As of 2026, 19 jurisdictions have enacted eviction record sealing or expungement laws, and several restrict access automatically at the moment of filing. More on those below.
Where courts file and store eviction records
There is no national eviction database. Landlords file eviction cases in local courts, the specific court varies by state, and each court maintains its own records. The CFPB found that tenant screening companies pull eviction data from more than 13,000 individual courts, often through third-party data brokers, precisely because no centralized open-data repository exists. Because the statutory frameworks governing court record access differ by state — determining what is public, how quickly records are available, and whether bulk data can be obtained at all — screening companies must navigate a patchwork of rules rather than a single uniform system. That fragmentation is also why landlords cannot assume that any one lookup captures the full picture: a search that covers courts in one state may miss filings entirely in another.
The property location and state terminology determine which court holds the record:
- California — Unlawful detainer: Superior Court (each county maintains its own records)
- Texas — Forcible detainer: Justice of the Peace court
- New York City — Nonpayment or holdover proceeding: Housing Court
- Massachusetts — Summary process: Housing Court or another trial court, including District Court or Boston Municipal Court
- Georgia — Dispossessory proceeding: Magistrate Court or, in some counties, State/Superior Court
- Arizona — Eviction action: Justice Court
- Nevada — Summary or formal eviction: Justice Court; District Court if damages exceed $10,000
This decentralization matters for anyone searching. A landlord with properties in three states needs three different lookup processes, and even within a state, online access policies can differ court by court.
Eviction filing vs. eviction judgment: what shows up and when
A filing and a judgment are different records, and both can appear in a public search. The filing is the landlord's complaint; the court dockets it before any judge has ruled. The judgment is the court's decision, which may favor the landlord or the tenant. In some cases, no judgment arrives because the parties settle or the court dismisses the case.
The gap between the two is wide. Across the 11 states and 11 counties in its dataset, the Eviction Lab found that 53.7% of filings resulted in eviction judgments, and 38.1% of cases lacked any recorded information about what happened after filing. Nearly half of all filings never became judgments against the tenant, yet the filing record persists either way.
That's why dismissed cases still create screening problems. Urban Institute researchers found past eviction records give little evidence of future eviction risk, especially since eviction data often indicates only a filing, not an executed eviction. Screening companies can and do pick up filings before a judgment exists, which means a tenant can lose a housing application over a case they went on to win.
How to check eviction records: step by step
The search has two tracks: court records and screening reports. Start with the court that has jurisdiction over the property address. Search its online portal if one exists. If the portal doesn't show the record or documents, contact the clerk's office and then pull your own tenant screening report to see what private databases have compiled. Use the court record to confirm what the court filed. Use the screening report to see what landlords receive.
Step 1: identify the correct court
Match the property address to the local court with jurisdiction. In Texas that's the Justice of the Peace precinct covering the address; in California it's the county Superior Court; in New York City it's Housing Court. If you're unsure, the county clerk's office can tell you which court handles landlord-tenant cases for a given address. Getting this wrong is the most common reason a search comes up empty when a record exists.
Step 2: search the online court portal
Several states run centralized portals that cover eviction cases, and access rules differ meaningfully between them:
- Wisconsin CCAP: Search at wcca.wicourts.gov. You do not need to register or pay a fee to search or view case information. CCAP does not display case documents online; you can get those only in person at the courthouse. Case information updates hourly.
- Texas Re:SearchTX: Search at research.txcourts.gov/CourtRecordsSearch. You must register, but registration is free, and the portal covers all 254 Texas counties. Searching case information is free; downloading documents costs $1.00 for 1–10 pages, then $0.10 per page after that.
- Pennsylvania UJS portal: Search at ujsportal.pacourts.us/CaseSearch. You do not need to register or pay a fee. The portal lets you select landlord/tenant as a docket type in Magisterial District Court, which makes eviction cases directly filterable.
- Indiana mycase: Search at public.courts.in.gov/mycase. Public searches are free and require no registration. For eviction (EV) cases, you can view only non-confidential orders online; all other case documents require an in-person visit to the clerk's office.
If your state isn't listed, check the state judiciary's website for a case search tool. Some states, like New York outside its centralized systems, spread records across more than 1,000 local courts with no unified portal.
Step 3: request records in person or by mail
When a portal doesn't exist or doesn't show documents, go to the clerk of the court that heard the case. Plain copies typically run $0.25–$1.00 per page, with a full range of $0.20–$5.00 depending on the state. Certified copies, which you'll want if you're proving a dismissal to a screening company, most commonly cost $3.00–$8.00 per document, though the range runs from $2.00 in Florida to $41.58 in Philadelphia.
Some clerks also charge search fees: $5.00 per name in Texas county clerk offices, $2.00 per year searched in Florida, up to $30.00 per hour in Washington. Bring the case number if you have it. A name-only search costs more and risks pulling the wrong person's records.
Step 4: check tenant screening and background-check reports
Use court records to confirm what exists. Use screening reports to see what landlords receive. Tenants can order their own reports from the major screening companies to preview what an application will surface. If a landlord denied a rental application based on a screening report, federal law entitles you to a free copy of that report within 60 days of the adverse action notice, which must identify the company that produced it.
Expect the screening report to differ from the court record. Filings can appear before any judgment exists, and dispositions frequently lag. Check every entry against the actual court docket.
How landlords and tenant screening companies access eviction records
Screening firms don't wait for anyone to report an eviction. They pull court filings independently, either by collecting records directly or by purchasing compiled data from brokers like LexisNexis, whose RiskView product covers landlord-tenant disputes in all states and updates data daily, though intervals vary by source.
Major providers differ in coverage and data sourcing: TransUnion SmartMove reports only final judgments and is unavailable in five states, RealPage draws on a database of over 30 million records, and SafeRent Solutions includes broader housing court data — meaning two reports on the same applicant can tell very different stories.
What every landlord should know is that a screening report shows a summary line, not the court file — and those summaries are frequently wrong. A peer-reviewed study of 3.6 million eviction records across 12 states found 22% contain ambiguous or false information about how a case resolved. The FTC and CFPB fined TransUnion's screening subsidiary $15 million in 2023 for reporting dismissed cases as evictions, duplicating entries, and including sealed records. A screening hit is a lead, not a verdict: verify every flag against the actual court docket before acting on it.
How to screen out high-risk tenants without relying on a single filing
If you own rental property and you're trying to make a smart, defensible leasing decision, here's the most important thing to understand: an eviction filing tells you almost nothing on its own. An eviction judgment tells you a great deal. That distinction should anchor your entire screening process.
Weight judgments, not filings. The Urban Institute found little evidence that a past eviction filing predicts future eviction risk — yet a single filing can trigger an automatic denial when landlords defer to screening scores without looking deeper. That's a problem, because the Eviction Lab found that 38.1% of cases in its dataset had no recorded outcome at all. You may be denying a qualified applicant over a case that was dismissed, settled, or simply never resolved on the record. A judgment against a tenant — especially a recent one for nonpayment — is a meaningful data point. A bare filing is not.
Always pull the actual court docket before you deny. Screening reports routinely omit dismissals, and a peer-reviewed study found that 22% of records contain ambiguous or false resolution information. That's not a rounding error — it's a material error rate. Before you reject an applicant based on a reported eviction, look up the case yourself on the court's public docket. It takes five minutes and it's the only way to know what actually happened.
Understand how eviction diversion changes the picture. Many states now run eviction diversion programs that resolve nonpayment disputes — often through repayment plans or mediation — before a case ever reaches judgment. A case that went through eviction diversion and was dismissed or resolved is not a red flag. It may actually signal a tenant who worked through a hardship responsibly. If you see a filing with no judgment, ask the applicant directly and check the docket. Context matters.
Know your legal exposure. Denying an applicant based on a filing alone — without verifying the outcome — creates real risk on two fronts. Under the FCRA, you must provide an adverse action notice that identifies the specific report and information you relied on, and inaccurate or unverified data undermines that process. On the fair-housing side, because eviction filings fall disproportionately on protected classes, a blanket 'any filing = denial' policy can draw a disparate-impact challenge. A documented, outcome-based screening standard protects you legally and produces better tenant decisions.
The bottom line: build your screening criteria around verified judgments, confirmed through the court record, not around raw filing counts on a third-party report.
Do evictions appear on credit reports?
No. Standard credit reports from the three major bureaus do not include eviction records, whether filings or judgments. Experian states directly that credit reports exclude evictions; the only public records on standard credit reports are bankruptcy filings.
That wasn't always true. Effective July 1, 2017, the three bureaus adopted stricter data standards under the National Consumer Assistance Plan, and the CFPB found that civil judgments disappeared entirely from credit reports as a result. An eviction can still reach your credit file through one side door: unpaid rent sent to a collection agency can be reported for up to seven years from the past-due date.
Tenant screening reports are a separate category of consumer report, and eviction records live there. The CFPB confirms these reports are separate consumer reports, with eviction information as a separate component. A clean credit report tells you nothing about what a screening report will show.
How long an eviction stays on your record
Courts, tenant screening companies, and credit bureaus use different clocks:
- Court records: Often decades or permanent (Texas civil dockets are permanent; Oregon eviction case files are kept 10 years; Nevada summary eviction files 6 years), governed by state judicial retention schedules.
- Tenant screening reports: Retained up to 7 years from the filing or judgment date, governed by the FCRA, 15 U.S.C. § 1681c.
- Credit reports: Evictions don't appear directly; rent collections can remain up to 7 years, governed by the FCRA plus 2017 bureau data standards.
Two details on the screening layer matter. First, the CFPB's January 2024 advisory opinion confirms the seven-year clock starts when the adverse event occurs, not when the case resolves. A 2020 filing dismissed in 2021 can legally appear on screening reports until 2027. Second, some companies report for shorter windows by policy: SafeRent's MyRental eviction history product covers only judgments in the landlord's favor within the past 36 months.
In many states, the court record outlasts screening reports; retention periods vary by state and court record type. Even after a record ages off every screening database, a person who searches the right courthouse may still find it, unless a sealing law intervenes.
Can a court seal or expunge an eviction record?
It depends entirely on your state. As of 2026, 19 jurisdictions have sealing or expungement laws. States use three mechanisms.
Some states seal automatically, with no petition required. Arizona seals dismissed cases before judgment or when the tenant wins. Colorado suppresses every eviction record at the moment of filing, making it public only if the landlord wins possession. California restricts unlawful detainer records for 60 days after filing; if the landlord doesn't obtain judgment in that window, the record becomes unavailable to public permanently. Minnesota, Indiana, and Connecticut run similar automatic tracks for dismissed cases and tenant wins. Maryland automatically shields certain failure-to-pay-rent proceedings that do not result in a judgment of possession.
Other states require a motion. Oregon lets tenants set aside judgments with no waiting period if the case was dismissed or the tenant won. Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Delaware, and North Dakota use petition-based systems with waiting periods that vary by case type.
Then there are the gap states. Texas has no general sealing process at all; the Texas Law Library confirms there is no mechanism for individuals to remove or seal an eviction record, and the sealing bills introduced in the 2025 legislature are not verified as enacted. The pattern across states: dismissed cases are consistently the easiest to remove, and judgments against the tenant the hardest.
One trap worth naming: a court seal doesn't automatically erase the record from a screening database that already collected it. Some states use orders of nondisclosure rather than full sealing — Washington's limited dissemination orders, for example, bar screening companies from disclosing the case but do not seal or vacate the official court record. An order of nondisclosure or limited dissemination restricts what a screening company may lawfully report without necessarily erasing the underlying court file. The CFPB has documented screening companies including sealed records in reports anyway, so after any sealing or nondisclosure order, verify your screening reports separately.
For landlords, the flip side matters too: a clean screening report doesn't guarantee no record exists. And if you independently locate a record that is subject to a nondisclosure order, you may be legally barred from acting on it — treating it as a basis for denial could expose you to liability even though you found the information.
What to do if your eviction record contains errors
Errors appear often enough that you should assume nothing until you've checked. An NCLC survey found 76% of legal aid attorneys had seen incorrect or missing eviction outcomes on screening reports, and 47% had seen eviction records attributed to the wrong person entirely. Congress gives you a dispute process under the FCRA, and screening companies must meet hard deadlines.
Start with documentation, then work the process:
- Pull the court record first. Get certified proof of the court outcome from the clerk, such as a dismissal, judgment, satisfaction, or other final record. This is your evidence, and it typically costs $3.00–$8.00 per document in most states.
- Dispute in writing with the screening company. Include the certified court documents. The company must conduct a 30-day reinvestigation, extendable to 45 if you submit additional information mid-review, and must forward your dispute to its data source within 5 business days.
- Demand deletion of anything unverifiable. If the company can't verify the item or the item is inaccurate or incomplete, the company must delete or correct it and notify you of the results within 5 business days of finishing.
The CFPB's 2024 advisory opinion sets three specific accuracy requirements you can cite: no duplicate entries for a single eviction, dispositions must be included, and screening companies must exclude sealed records. Under the CFPB rule, a filing reported without its dismissal is inaccurate. If the company blows the process, the FCRA gives you a private right of action: statutory damages of $100 to $1,000 per willful violation, plus attorney's fees.
If the error lives in the court record itself, such as a wrongly entered default, file in the court that heard the case. File a motion to correct or vacate, then send the corrected record to every screening company that reported the old version.
Protecting yourself from wrongful-eviction liability
Even a properly filed, fully documented eviction can expose you to a lawsuit. Tenants sometimes claim the eviction was retaliatory, discriminatory, or procedurally defective — and defending that claim in court costs money whether you win or lose. Legal fees alone can run into the thousands, and an unfavorable judgment can cost significantly more.
The most practical safeguard is landlord insurance built for rentals — specifically the landlord liability insurance component. A solid policy can cover your legal defense costs and any liability that arises if a tenant sues over an eviction, so a single dispute does not become a financial crisis. Think of it as the financial backstop that pairs with everything else covered in this guide: careful tenant screening, accurate records, and a documented eviction process reduce the likelihood of a claim, while landlord liability insurance protects you if one surfaces anyway. Get the coverage in place before you need it — not after a summons arrives.
Not covered? Get a free landlord insurance quote in minutes:
FAQ
Quick answers to the questions that come up most when checking eviction records.
Is there a single national database of eviction records?
No. Thousands of local courts hold eviction records, and the CFPB counts more than 13,000 courts feeding tenant screening data. Private screening databases aggregate these records, but no government-run national database exists.
Will a dismissed eviction case show up on a background check?
It can. The filing itself is a public record that screening companies may report for up to seven years from the filing date, even after dismissal. Under the CFPB's 2024 guidance, the report must show the case as dismissed; a filing reported without its disposition is an accuracy violation you can dispute.
What's the difference between an eviction filing and an eviction judgment?
A filing is the landlord's complaint, docketed before any ruling. A judgment is the court's decision. In the Eviction Lab's multi-state dataset, 53.7% of filings resulted in eviction judgments, but both record types are publicly visible by default.
How long does an eviction stay on my record?
Seven years on tenant screening reports, counted from the filing or judgment date rather than the resolution date. Court records last longer, from 6 years in Nevada to permanently in Texas, unless a state sealing law removes them. Standard credit reports don't carry eviction records at all.
Where do I look up an eviction record?
Start with the court that has jurisdiction over the property address. States like Wisconsin (wcca.wicourts.gov), Texas (research.txcourts.gov), Pennsylvania (ujsportal.pacourts.us), and Indiana (public.courts.in.gov/mycase) run free or low-cost online portals. Where no portal exists, request records from the clerk of court in person or by mail, with copies typically running $0.25–$1.00 per page.
.jpg)
.png)