Are Court Records Public? What's Open, What's Sealed, and What's Confidential

Yes, generally. Court records in the United States are presumptively public under a common-law right of access, and most states add a constitutional or statutory open-courts guarantee on top of it. That presumption has real exceptions: certain case categories, like juvenile and adoption proceedings, are confidential in essentially every state, and others, like family law or mental-health cases, vary by state in whether they're confidential outright or simply restricted from remote online access.

This page covers the general structure behind that answer: where the presumption of openness comes from, what's confidential almost everywhere, the difference between "public" and "available online," what sealed and expunged actually mean in the courts' own words, and how the Fair Credit Reporting Act governs using a court record for a background check.

Information last verified on 2026-08-10. This article has not yet been reviewed by a licensed lawyer.

Are Court Records Public? The Short Answer

Yes, court records are presumptively public, subject to a specific list of exceptions that varies somewhat by state. Every state examined in detail for this cluster, California, Washington, and Minnesota among them, starts from the same structural baseline: records are open unless a specific rule, statute, or court order says otherwise. None of the states checked run the presumption in reverse, with records treated as confidential by default and opened only on request.

Washington's GR 31 states the presumption almost as a plain sentence: "The public shall have access to all court records except as restricted by federal law, state law, court rule, court order, or case law." Minnesota's Rules of Public Access to Records of the Judicial Branch confirm the same baseline, with its own named exceptions. California's Rule of Court 2.503 confirms it too, structured slightly differently, as covered below.

The Presumption of Open Courts

The public-access presumption traces back further than any individual state rule. At the federal level, it rests on a common-law right of access, described by federal courts as the recognition that "the courts of this country recognize a general right to inspect and copy public records and documents, including judicial records and documents," language the Third Circuit and other courts have traced to the Supreme Court's decision in Nixon v. Warner Communications. That right is not absolute; a court may seal records "if the public's right of access is outweighed by competing interests," but the starting point is openness.

States build on that same foundation with their own constitutional or rule-based language. Washington's GR 31 ties access directly to Article I, Section 10 of the state constitution. Iowa's own code is unusually direct: Iowa Code section 602.1601 states that "all judicial proceedings shall be public unless otherwise specially provided by statute or agreed to by the parties." The pattern repeats across states even where the specific citation differs.

What's Usually Confidential Everywhere

Some categories of case are treated as confidential so consistently across states that they function as a near-universal baseline, even though each state technically sets its own list.

Juvenile proceedings. Delinquency and dependency cases involving minors are confidential in essentially every state checked, kept off public portals and, in many states, out of general courthouse access as well.

Adoption. Adoption records are confidential everywhere this cluster verified, typically sealed by a separate adoption-specific statute or rule rather than the general access rule.

Mental health and civil commitment. Mental-health and civil-commitment proceedings are confidential or heavily restricted in most states checked, though the precise scope (the entire case versus specific medical filings within it) varies.

Beyond these three, the pattern diverges by state: family law, guardianship, certain protective-order proceedings, and specific document types (like presentence investigation reports) are confidential in some states and only remote-access-restricted, or fully public, in others. Check the specific state's court records page for the exact list, since a category confidential in one state can be simply courthouse-only, or fully online, in another.

Public but Not Online: The Remote-vs-Courthouse Gap

This is the distinction readers most often miss, and it is the reason a record can be legally public while a search turns up nothing online.

California's Rule of Court 2.503 draws this line explicitly. It sorts electronic case records into three tiers, not two: records available both remotely and at the courthouse; records the court "must provide electronic access to... at the courthouse, to the extent it is feasible to do so, but may not provide public remote access to," which includes family-law proceedings (dissolution, custody, child and spousal support, domestic violence prevention), juvenile proceedings, guardianship and conservatorship, mental-health proceedings, criminal proceedings, and several categories of civil protective-order case; and records sealed or made confidential by law, available at neither. The middle tier is the important one: those records are public, courts are simply barred from putting them on the internet for the general public.

This structure is not universal. Washington's GR 31 restricts a different thing entirely, barring bulk online distribution of juvenile offender records rather than carving out family law from remote access. Don't assume a category that's courthouse-only in one state follows the same rule elsewhere; confirm on the relevant state's own court-records page.

Sealed vs. Expunged: What the Words Actually Mean

These two words get used loosely, but courts draw a real distinction, and the exact terminology and mechanics differ by state.

In general terms: sealing restricts who can see a record that continues to exist. Expungement (or a state's differently named equivalent) generally destroys the record or removes it from public access entirely, a more complete outcome than sealing.

Massachusetts states this about as directly as any state's own guidance does: "Having a criminal record expunged means that the record will be permanently destroyed so that it's no longer accessible by the court or any other state, municipal, or county agencies. It's not the same as having a record sealed," where the record continues to exist but access to it is restricted, decided by a judge weighing "good cause" against the public's general right of access.

Terminology inverts in some states in ways worth knowing before you assume a word means what it usually means. Texas has no statutory "sealing" mechanism at all: its hide-the-record remedy is called an order of nondisclosure, and its destroy-the-record remedy is expunction, not expungement. New York runs two entirely separate sealing mechanisms under different statutes, an automatic Clean Slate track and an older ten-year petition-based track, that are easy to conflate but work on different timelines with different eligibility.

For your specific state's terminology, waiting periods, and eligibility rules, see expungement by state; this page covers only the general concept, not a specific state's process.

Can Employers See a Sealed or Expunged Record?

Generally no, if a record has actually gone through the state's sealing or expungement process, that removal is the entire point. But two things trip people up here.

Sealing and expungement are not automatic outcomes of time passing, in most states. A conviction does not become sealed simply because years have gone by; it requires the specific legal process the state provides, whether petition-based or (in a growing number of states) automatic under a Clean Slate-style law.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act does not do this work on its own. Under 15 U.S.C. § 1681c, arrests, civil judgments, and paid tax liens age off a consumer report after seven years, or until the applicable statute of limitations expires if that period is longer (bankruptcies after ten), but § 1681c(a)(5) specifically exempts criminal convictions from that window. A conviction can be reported indefinitely under FCRA, no matter how old, unless a state sealing or expungement action has actually removed it.

This intersects directly with how court records get used for background checks. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's 2024 Circular confirms that any entity compiling reports from "public sources, such as criminal history records," and marketing them for hiring or promotion decisions, is subject to FCRA's accuracy and dispute-investigation duties as a consumer reporting agency, regardless of how the entity describes itself. The Federal Trade Commission has already enforced this: in 2023, it reached a $5.8 million settlement with TruthFinder and Instant Checkmate over marketing public-records background reports for tenant and employee screening without FCRA compliance, stating plainly that "if you market your reports to be used to screen tenants or employees, you are a consumer reporting agency and you must follow the requirements of the FCRA." Personal lookups, checking your own record or a case you already know about, are unaffected; using a court portal or a people-search product to screen someone for employment or housing without FCRA compliance is the pattern that got these companies fined. See background check laws by state for the employer-side compliance walkthrough.

Civil Case Sealing: A Different Kind of "Sealed"

One more distinction worth knowing: sealing a specific document inside an active civil lawsuit, for example a trade secret or a medical record introduced as evidence, is a completely different legal mechanism from sealing a criminal conviction record. California's Rule of Court 2.550 sets the standard: a court may seal a record only on express findings of an "overriding interest" that outweighs the public's right of access, a substantial probability that interest would be prejudiced without sealing, that the sealing request is narrowly tailored, and that no less-restrictive alternative exists. Most states apply some version of this same "overriding interest, narrowly tailored" test for civil sealing motions. This track is motion-based, inside a specific case, and is not something the expungement cluster covers, since it has nothing to do with a criminal record.

Disclaimer

This article provides general legal information about the public-access rules that govern court records in the United States. It is not legal advice, and it is not a substitute for consulting a licensed attorney about your specific situation. Access rules and terminology described here reflect their published status as of 2026-08-10 and vary by state; always confirm the current rule for your state directly.

Last updated: 2026-08-10. Portal facts and fees reflect their published status as of August 2026.