Dive Brief:
- Maryland is now one of 17 states, plus the District of Columbia, where certain eviction records are sealed from public record after a period of time, according to a new law that took effect on Oct. 1.
- Under the law, approved by Maryland Gov. Wes Moore earlier this year, Maryland district courts must shield all records in eviction proceedings that did not result in the removal of the renter from the property within 60 days of the judgment.
- Cases that led to removal may also be sealed at the discretion of the court, or if the tenant exercises their right of redemption — paying the rent owed within a certain period of time — and at least 12 months have passed. In all cases, records may only be opened again at the request of the tenant, or “for good cause.”
Dive Insight:
As eviction moratoriums have expired in the aftermath of the COVID-19 lockdown, eviction filings have risen across the country, up over 50% from pre-pandemic levels in some cities, according to The Eviction Lab.
Maryland dismissed more than 200,000 failure-to-pay-rent proceedings from 2020 to 2021, according to the legislation. The state had an emergency eviction moratorium in place from March 2020 to August 2021, and a 2022 Maryland law let tenants petition for their eviction records to be sealed, regardless of result, if the cause of the eviction was nonpayment of rent due to income loss from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Idaho and Massachusetts also passed eviction-sealing laws this year. Connecticut and Rhode Island passed similar laws in 2023, as did Arizona in 2022, according to PolicyLink data. Out of the 17 states with eviction-sealing laws, 12 of them passed those laws after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. New measures are under consideration in Oklahoma and Pennsylvania.
Conditions for sealing vary by state or jurisdiction. In California and Colorado, records are sealed immediately unless and until the landlord wins the case. In Idaho, eviction filings that were dismissed may be shielded after three years. Other states, including Massachusetts, require tenants to file a petition to seal a case.
Even in cases where evictions are dismissed, withdrawn or won, having an eviction case on file can lead to negative consequences for renters if the cases come up in tenant screening reports, according to a study from the University of Michigan. Sixty-five percent of renters who moved following an eviction filing that did not end in removal said a prospective landlord asked about their record, and over half had been explicitly denied because of it.
This leads prospective tenants to rack up fees from unsuccessful applications or to move into substandard or hazardous conditions in order to remain housed.
“Even when a tenant wins in court, they are routinely denied for rental housing because it’s the eviction filing itself that is reported to future landlords,” said Holly Beck, divisional supervising attorney at Community Legal Services of Philadelphia, in a press release about the report.
