California Court Records: Why There's No Statewide Portal, and How Each County Search Works

California is the country's largest state court system, and it has no statewide website for searching a case by name. California Rule of Court 2.503 hands custody of electronic records to each of the state's 58 Superior Courts individually, which means the real answer to how do I search California court records depends entirely on which county the case is in.

California also has a fact worth knowing before you search at all: some categories of case are public but courthouse-only, meaning no county in the state may put them online, no matter how the local portal is built.

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

This guide is part of a broader look at court records by state. For the general mechanics of federal versus state versus county searches, see how to look up court records and are court records public.

Why There's No Single California Court Records Website

California Rule of Court 2.503 is the reason a statewide portal does not exist. The rule assigns responsibility for public access to electronic trial court records to each individual Superior Court, one per county, rather than to a centralized state system. That means a reader looking for a case has to first identify the county where it was filed, then use that county's own tool, which can differ in cost, coverage, and how far back records go.

The Statewide Rule Everyone Shares: Rule 2.503(c)

Even though access is county-by-county, one part of the rule is genuinely statewide. Rule 2.503(c) lists categories of case that are public in the legal sense, meaning a member of the public may view them, but that no California Superior Court may make available through public remote access. The rule's own list covers records in a Family Code proceeding, a juvenile court proceeding, a guardianship or conservatorship proceeding, a mental health proceeding, a criminal proceeding, proceedings to compromise the claims of a minor or a person with a disability, a civil harassment proceeding under Code of Civil Procedure section 527.6, a workplace violence prevention proceeding under section 527.8, a private postsecondary school violence prevention proceeding under section 527.85, an elder or dependent adult abuse prevention proceeding under Welfare and Institutions Code section 15657.03, and a gun violence prevention proceeding under Penal Code sections 18100 through 18205.

The practical effect: for any of these case types, going to a courthouse in person is the only way to view the file, no matter which county or which portal is involved. This is distinct from sealing. A sealed record under Rule of Court 2.550 is excluded entirely, even from courthouse viewing; a Rule 2.503(c) record is fully public, just not remote.

Los Angeles County: A Real Per-Search Fee

Los Angeles Superior Court's Case Summary and Public Access Online Services charge for name searches. Per the court's own fee schedule, a registered user pays on a sliding scale from $1.00 per search (for searches 1 through 10) up to $4.00 per search (for searches over 10,000), while a guest user pays a flat $4.75 per name search regardless of how many results come back. The court's own FAQ explains the logic: each search incurs a public access fee to reimburse the court for the costs of providing public access to its electronic records, and the fee applies to each search regardless of the number of results returned. Document images cost $1.00 per page for the first five pages, then $0.40 per page after that, with a $40.00 cap per document. LA's civil, small claims, family law, and probate records are searchable this way; criminal records use a separate index.

Santa Clara County: Free Search, Paid Copies

Santa Clara County Superior Court's Case Information Online tool covers civil, small claims, probate, some family, traffic and local ordinance, and criminal cases, and the search itself is free. The court's own page is direct about what is missing: case documents, meaning the actual filings, are not generally available online. For a document, the Clerk's Office charges $0.50 per page. The court's page also carries a standard access caveat: information provided is subject to applicable law, court rules, and public access guidelines, and the court may limit access to certain information where confidentiality is required by statute or rule.

Other counties, including San Diego, run comparable index-search tools with their own fee structures; confirm the specific county's current pricing and coverage directly, since California's model means there is no single statewide answer.

California's Three Tracks for Hiding a Criminal Record

California does not have one sealing law. It runs three separate, non-overlapping tracks, and mixing them up leads to wrong conclusions about what a record shows.

The first is Penal Code section 1203.4, colloquially called expungement, but legally a plea-withdrawal-and-dismissal. The underlying case is dismissed after a successful petition, but the record remains visible to law enforcement and certain licensing bodies.

The second is automatic record relief under Penal Code sections 851.93 (arrests) and 1203.425 (convictions), created by SB 731 and AB 1076. This is the track most likely to be described online as sealing, and the California Department of Justice's own page corrects that framing directly: automatic record relief is not a dismissal, sealing, or expungement of a person's state summary criminal history information record. The department reviews arrest and conviction records for eligibility on a monthly basis, without requiring a petition, but eligible records simply become subject to a narrower disclosure rule under Penal Code section 11105 rather than being dismissed, sealed, or erased.

The third is civil sealing under Rule of Court 2.550, a motion-based process inside a lawsuit, evaluated under a five-factor overriding-interest test. This track has nothing to do with criminal history; it applies to civil case records a party asks the court to protect.

For the eligibility rules and process for petition-based relief and automatic record relief, see California expungement laws, which this guide does not duplicate.

Certified Copies

A certified copy of a California court document comes from the Superior Court clerk in the county where the case was filed. Fee schedules are set per county; this guide does not publish a single statewide figure given how much county-level variance already exists in California's model.

Using California Court Records the Right Way

County portals are built for checking a specific case, whether it is your own or one you have a legitimate reason to look into, not for compiling a background file on someone else. If a California court record is used to screen a job applicant or a tenant, that use is governed separately by the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act and by California's own background-check rules. Because automatic record relief is a disclosure restriction rather than a true sealing or dismissal, a record covered by it may still be treated differently depending on who is asking and under what legal authority, which is a genuinely more layered picture than in most other states.

Related Resources

Court Records by State covers the full 50-state picture. See also How to Look Up Court Records, Are Court Records Public?, California Expungement Laws, California Background Check Laws, California Warrant Search, and California Public Records Laws.

Disclaimer

This article provides general information about California's county-by-county court records model and its three record-relief tracks. It is not legal advice. Portal fees and coverage change and vary by county; verify current details with the relevant Superior Court or a licensed California attorney before relying on anything here for a specific situation.

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