Ohio Court Records: How to Search by County, What's Public, and Sealing

This article covers how to search Ohio court records, which is a county-by-county process rather than a single statewide search, what's public under Ohio's court rules, and how Ohio's sealing and expungement remedies work after a 2023 overhaul. 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 Ohio Court Records

Ohio is a genuinely fragmented state for court-record search. There is no site where you type a name once and see every Ohio case; instead, each of the state's 88 counties runs its own Clerk of Courts system, and coverage, search fields, and cost vary by county.

Two of the state's largest counties illustrate the pattern. Franklin County (Columbus) runs Case Information Online, known as CIO, through the Clerk of Courts. CIO covers criminal and civil cases filed in the General Division of the Court of Common Pleas, Domestic Relations cases filed in the Domestic Relations Division, and appellate cases filed in the 10th District Court of Appeals. The Clerk's own policy states plainly that the information in CIO does not constitute the official record and is only considered a copy, so a discrepancy gets resolved by checking the official court file at the courthouse, not by trusting the online result.

Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) runs its own Case Records Search System through its Clerk of Courts, described on its own site as select public records maintained by the Clerk of Courts, offered as a convenience to the public. As with Franklin County, the Clerk's terms note that documents in the system are not the official public records, and recommend verifying anything important against the office's own records at 1200 Ontario Street in Cleveland.

For any other Ohio county, including Hamilton County (Cincinnati), the starting point is that county's own Clerk of Courts website; search the county name plus "clerk of courts" rather than assuming a single statewide tool exists. Cost, search fields, and how far back records go are set by each county individually, so do not assume one county's rules apply to another.

What's Public and What's Restricted

Ohio's Rules of Superintendence, specifically Sup.R. 45, set the baseline: court records are presumed open to public access, covering both case documents and administrative documents filed in a judicial proceeding. A clerk must acknowledge an access request promptly and respond within a reasonable time.

To restrict access, someone has to file a written motion, and a court can only grant it on clear-and-convincing evidence that the presumption of access is outweighed by a higher interest. Judges weigh factors including whether public policy supports restriction, whether a state, federal, or common-law exemption applies, and whether privacy, safety, or fair-trial concerns justify closure. Ohio's rule also pushes courts toward the least restrictive option before sealing an entire document, such as redacting sensitive lines, limiting remote access while still allowing in-person viewing at the courthouse, or replacing names with initials.

Certain categories sit outside the general presumption of openness by default: personal identifiers like Social Security and bank-account numbers, judicial officers' own notes and drafts, juvenile dependency and abuse records, health-care documents filed in a case, and financial disclosure statements filed in domestic relations matters.

Sealing and Expungement After SB 288

Ohio Senate Bill 288, effective April 4, 2023, is the biggest change to this area of Ohio law in years, and it created a real terminology split that did not exist before. Ohio now recognizes both sealing, where the record is hidden from public view but retained by the court, and expungement, where the record is destroyed, as distinct remedies for adult conviction records under Ohio Revised Code 2953.32.

Before SB 288, a person could only petition to seal a limited number of convictions under a category called "eligible offender," capped by prior-conviction count. SB 288 removed that categorical cap, so a person can now seek sealing or expungement of an unlimited number of qualifying convictions, as long as no individual offense falls into a permanently excluded category, such as sexually oriented offenses or offenses against children under 13, and the applicable waiting period has passed.

SB 288 also introduced an automatic-sealing pathway for certain eligible offenses, handled by the court and the Bureau of Criminal Investigation without a petition or fee. That rollout has been uneven across Ohio's counties and courts since 2023, which is consistent with Ohio's fragmented, county-by-county court-technology landscape generally: an automatic-eligible record can still show up in a county's online search if that county's court has not yet processed it, and the person can still file a manual petition rather than wait.

This article covers the shape of the law, not your specific eligibility. For current waiting periods and the excluded-offense list as they apply to your situation, see Ohio Expungement Laws.

Certified Copies and Practical Search Tips

Certified copies come from the Clerk of the Court of Common Pleas in the county where the case was filed, which follows the same county-by-county pattern as the search itself. Search fields also vary by county; some support name and case-number search on the same page, others split them. Because there is no single Ohio-wide answer, check the specific county's Clerk of Courts site for its own instructions before assuming a search method that worked in one county will work in another.

Using This Information the Right Way

Ohio's county-by-county structure makes false negatives especially easy: a clean result from one county's clerk system tells you nothing about a case filed in a different county. If you are screening a job applicant or tenant, a single county's online search is not a complete, Fair Credit Reporting Act compliant background check, and a people-search aggregator that claims to search "Ohio" in one query should be treated with real skepticism given how fragmented the underlying data actually is.

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

Disclaimer

This article provides general legal information about Ohio 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, can vary further by county, and can change without notice. For advice about a specific case, sealing eligibility, or a specific record, consult a lawyer licensed in Ohio.

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