North Dakota Court Records: How to Search, What's Public, and Sealing

This article covers how to search North Dakota court records through the state's public portal, what's public versus confidential under North Dakota's court-records rule, and how North Dakota's sealing and expungement remedies work. It does not cover other states; for those, see the Court Records by State hub.

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

How to Search North Dakota Court Records

North Dakota's public search tool is the North Dakota Courts Records Inquiry, hosted at publicsearch.ndcourts.gov on Tyler Technologies infrastructure. It is free and does not require a login for basic searches. The location picker lets you search a single county, a single municipal court, or all of North Dakota at once by selecting "State of North Dakota," which runs one statewide search rather than making you check each county separately, a structure most states in this cluster do not offer.

The portal is organized into sections: Criminal/Traffic; Civil, Family and Probate case records; a Judgments Search; and a Court Calendar. Coverage extends beyond district courts. It also includes case information from 15 municipal courts, among them Fargo, Bismarck, and Minot, which is an unusual breadth for a statewide tool; in most states, municipal-court records sit entirely outside the statewide system.

One timing detail worth planning around: the portal states that its data is current through the end of the previous business day. A hearing or filing that happened this morning generally will not show up until the next business day's update. For anything time-sensitive, a search of the portal is not a substitute for calling the clerk of the specific court.

District courts also maintain public terminals where you can search and print records in person at no cost, which is useful if you need something the online tool does not show or if you want the assistance of courthouse staff.

What's Public and What's Restricted

North Dakota's governing rule is N.D. Sup. Ct. Admin. R. 41, Access to Court Records. The rule's general position is that judicial system records are presumed open for examination, inspection, and copying during regular office hours. It separates two categories of records the public cannot get through the ordinary process: a confidential record, meaning disclosure is prohibited by federal or state law, court rule, case law, or a specific court order, and an exempt record, meaning access is discretionary rather than legally required. Supporting affidavits for search and arrest warrants are confidential while the warrant is outstanding, and become accessible once the warrant is returned. The rule also sets out a written-request procedure under which a party or the subject of a record can ask the court to restrict access, and the court weighs the risk of injury, privacy interests, and any proprietary business information at stake.

Sealing and Expungement in North Dakota

North Dakota is one of the states where the two words mean genuinely different things, and mixing them up gives a reader the wrong expectation.

Sealing, governed by North Dakota Century Code Chapter 12-60.1, restricts a record from public view, but the record still exists and specific entities, such as most government agencies acting under a court order, can still see it. A petition to seal generally requires a waiting period since completing a sentence, and the court weighs factors like the nature of the offense and the petitioner's history before granting it; nonconviction records can also be closed under the same chapter.

Expungement means permanent destruction. No one, public or private, can access an expunged record afterward, but North Dakota limits expungement to a narrow set of circumstances: juvenile-court matters, marijuana-possession cases, and offenses committed by a victim of human trafficking. It is not a general-purpose remedy for adult convictions the way sealing is.

North Dakota does not have an automatic Clean Slate law. Both remedies require the person to file a petition; nothing clears automatically on a timer. For the specific eligibility tests and current wait periods for your situation, see North Dakota Expungement Laws, which covers that detail rather than duplicating it here.

Using This Information the Right Way

A North Dakota portal search is meant for looking up your own case or a case you have a legitimate interest in, not for compiling a dossier on someone else. If you are screening a job applicant or prospective tenant, a portal search alone is not a Fair Credit Reporting Act compliant background check, and using a people-search aggregator for that purpose creates real legal exposure; regulators have pursued companies that marketed public-records lookups for exactly that use without following FCRA procedures. A name search can also produce false matches, especially for common names, so treat a hit as a lead to confirm with a case number, not a confirmed identification on its own.

Related reading: Court Records by State, How to Look Up Court Records, Are Court Records Public?, North Dakota Background Check Laws, North Dakota Warrant Search, and North Dakota Public Records Laws for records held by executive-branch agencies rather than the courts.

Disclaimer

This article provides general legal information about North Dakota court records, not legal advice, and does not create an attorney-client relationship. Portal names, coverage, and fee information reflect their published status as of the verification date above and can change without notice. For advice about a specific case, sealing eligibility, or a specific record, consult a lawyer licensed in North Dakota.

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