Civil Records · Updated 2026-05-24 · Citation-verified edition
Civil Records in 2026: The Quiet Revolution in Eviction, Liens, and the Public Right to Know
On May 5, 2025, Massachusetts began letting tenants seal eviction records. On April 21, 2025, Minnesota's Court of Appeals struck down a 2023 automatic-expungement law. On April 10, 2026, DOJ extracted the first-ever False Claims Act settlement over alleged illegal DEI practices — $17 million from IBM. The American civil record is being rewritten in three directions at once. Every figure below is tied to a primary source.
By Open Public Records2026-05-24~20 min read52 sources
The sealing provisions took effect May 5, 2025. Mass.gov's official explainer: "Tenants will now be able to petition the courts to seal certain eviction records that can make it difficult for renters to secure housing" (Mass.gov — Sealing Eviction Records: Coming in May 2025). The mechanism is codified in Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 239, §16: "A person having a court record of a no-fault eviction on file in a court may petition the court to seal the court record at any time aft[er filing]" (M.G.L. c. 239, §16). The National Low Income Housing Coalition's analysis frames the impact: enacted "as part of the landmark 'Affordable Homes Act' in 2024, the provision allows tenants to petition the courts" (NLIHC analysis).
The doctrinal effect is significant. Massachusetts becomes the latest state to convert eviction records from a permanent public liability into a record with a sealing pathway. The petition-based model differs from automatic-sealing approaches in other states, but the legal mechanism — a court order finding that the public interest in disclosure is outweighed by the tenant's privacy interest — is the same.
Landscape
The civil-record landscape in 2026
For most of the past century, the civil record — the dockets and filings that record disputes between people and institutions over money, contracts, property, families, and harms — has been one of the most-aggregated and least-sealed categories of public information. Federal civil filings are tracked on PACER. State civil dockets are searchable through state-court portals. The Eviction Lab at Princeton has built the most comprehensive national dataset of eviction filings ever assembled — and its 2025 preliminary analysis is the dataset everyone should be starting from (Eviction Lab)(Eviction Lab tracking)(Eviction Lab — 2025 preliminary analysis).
The PNAS demographic study linked 38 million eviction court cases to U.S. Census records, finding that 7.6 million people, including 2.9 million children, faced the threat of eviction across those records (PNAS — comprehensive demographic profile). GAO's parallel review describes the same linkage: "Census and Eviction Lab researchers successfully linked 38 million" eviction cases to demographic data (GAO — Evictions: National Data Are Limited).
In 2026, that civil record is undergoing more change than any single year since the e-filing transition began. Massachusetts (May 2025) joined the eviction-sealing column. Minnesota's Court of Appeals reversed it (April 2025). DOJ extracted the first-ever False Claims Act DEI settlement from IBM (April 2026). Two RealPage settlements together rewrote what "algorithmic pricing" means for the rental record. And the federal civil case-management system itself is being rebuilt under a post-2025 cyberattack pressure — a structural story I cover in our court-records article.
Eviction
Eviction records — the fastest-changing area in civil law
By the National Low Income Housing Coalition's count: "As of 2025, 21 states have active eviction record sealing or expungement laws. During this 2025 legislative year, 14 states introduced laws" on the same subject (NLIHC — state legislators introduce tenant protections, 2025). The state-by-state map is moving toward sealing across both parties' legislative agendas.
California: CCP §1161.2. California's masking statute — Code of Civil Procedure §1161.2 — has been amended multiple times to expand which unlawful-detainer (eviction) cases get masked from public view and when. AB 1795 (2019–2020) and AB 2290 (2021–2022) extended the masking framework, and AB 2819 (2015–2016) established the underlying mask-during-pendency rule (California Legislature — AB 1795)(AB 2290)(AB 2819). The Urban Institute's empirical analysis frames why masking matters: "Eviction record sealing and expungement can be effective at any stage of the eviction process — from filing to decision — and can be triggered" by the tenant's prevailing party status or by court order (Urban Institute — Masking Eviction Records)(Upturn — How to Seal Eviction Records).
Pennsylvania: HB 1095. The Pennsylvania House bill received first consideration on May 5, 2025; second consideration after amendment on June 16, 2025 (PA Legislature — HB 1095 history). The Housing Alliance of Pennsylvania frames the policy: "This legislation seeks to seal lifetime public access to eviction records after seven years" (Housing Alliance PA — HB 1095 advances)(Housing Alliance PA — January 2026 update). The Regional Housing Legal Services explainer adds that "Rep. Ismail Smith-Wade-El (D-Lancaster) introduced HB 1095 to seal eviction records after seven years" (RHLS).
The reversal is the single most consequential pushback on the auto-sealing trend in any state. The Minnesota Supreme Court will have the final word, and its decision — when it lands — sets the constitutional floor for how aggressively a state can mandate automatic eviction-record expungement.
Filing Volume
The eviction filing surge that wasn't — and the one that was
The Eviction Lab's preliminary 2025 analysis: "Across all sites that we currently monitor, landlords filed 1.23 million eviction cases in 2025. This total was slightly lower than in 2024" (Eviction Lab — 2025 preliminary analysis). The 2024 figure: "just over one million eviction cases in 2024 in the jurisdictions we track" (Eviction Lab — 2024 preliminary analysis). The methodology covers only the cities and counties the Lab actively monitors — a substantial but not nationwide sample.
The structural shift is in New York City. The City's eviction-filing decline between 2013 and 2024 — "from 247,000 cases to 118,000" — is one of the largest documented in any large U.S. jurisdiction; the New York City Comptroller's analysis attributes the decline to multiple factors including the city's right-to-counsel program and stronger eviction-defense infrastructure (NYC Comptroller — Evictions Up, Representation Down).
Algorithmic Pricing
RealPage: DOJ's two-track settlement reshapes the rental record
The Justice Department's antitrust action against RealPage — the property-management software company whose pricing algorithm was used by major U.S. landlords to coordinate rent — produced a proposed settlement filed on the docket and published in the Federal Register on December 5, 2025 (Federal Register — DOJ proposed final judgment, Dec. 5, 2025). A second, expanded proposed judgment landed January 21, 2026 (Federal Register — proposed final judgment, Jan. 21, 2026). DOJ's own press release frames the structural relief: "Justice Department Requires RealPage to End the Sharing of Competitively Sensitive Information and Alignment of Pricing Among Competitors" (DOJ — RealPage settlement). The full agreement text is on DOJ's site (DOJ — settlement agreement PDF).
The companion action targeted Greystar — the largest U.S. landlord — which DOJ extracted into a parallel proposed settlement to "Prohibit Algorithmic Coordination and Exchanging Competitively Sensitive Data with Competitors" (DOJ — Greystar settlement). The District of Columbia Attorney General had already sued RealPage and 14 of the largest residential landlords in the District (DC OAG — Schwalb sues RealPage).
NAR / Sitzer-Burnett housing-commission settlement. The Department of Justice's published settlement filing in United States v. National Association of REALTORS documents the antitrust-related restructuring of MLS rules and broker-commission practices (DOJ — NAR settlement filing). The underlying Burnett class action in the Western District of Missouri produced a separate $1.8 billion class verdict and a $418 million settlement in March 2024, both of which restructured how buyer-agent commissions are disclosed in U.S. residential real estate.
Camp Lejeune. DOJ has paid more than $421 million in EO settlements to Camp Lejeune victims and their families since January 20, 2025 — though the agency itself notes that the per-claimant volume remains low relative to the total filing population (DOJ — Camp Lejeune EO settlements).
PFAS. The Emory Law Journal's analysis of PFAS litigation tracks the multibillion-dollar settlement landscape, including the $316 million BASF settlement reached as part of the firefighting-foam multidistrict litigation in the District of South Carolina (Emory Law Journal — PFAS / Endangered Species Act analysis).
FCA / IBM-DEI
FCA: $6.8 billion in FY2025, and the first-ever DEI settlement
The structural pivot inside FCA enforcement is the Civil Rights Fraud Initiative. On May 19, 2025, DOJ announced the initiative would "utilize the False Claims Act to investigate" alleged civil-rights violations by federal contractors and recipients (DOJ — Civil Rights Fraud Initiative)(CRS — FCA Enforcement Involving DEI).
The first settlement landed on April 10, 2026: DOJ announced "IBM Pays $17 Million to Resolve Allegations of Discrimination Through Illegal DEI Practices" — the first-ever False Claims Act settlement concerning alleged illegal DEI practices, with International Business Machines paying $17,077,043 inclusive of civil penalties (DOJ — IBM $17M DEI/FCA settlement).
The Stack
Tools that actually work — the public-interest stack
The civil-record research stack in 2026 is built on a small set of nonprofit institutions that have done the structural work of making the record searchable, free, and machine-readable:
Open Public Records — court records system. OPR indexes 12.9 million court-case pages across all 50 states and the federal system, with per-case enrichment against OFAC sanctions, FBI Most Wanted, HHS-OIG LEIE exclusions, sheriff arrest feeds, and state unclaimed-property registries. Free, no credit card, every claim sourced to the primary government feed it came from (OPR Court Records).
OPR — federal court coverage. Federal docket records on OPR mirror the U.S. Bankruptcy Court and U.S. District Court systems, indexed by case number, party name, and filing date, with cross-references to OFAC sanctions and FBI fugitive lists where matches exist (OPR Federal Courts)(OPR Court Records).
The Eviction Lab. Princeton's centralized eviction-filings dataset is the only national source most newsrooms and policymakers cite (Eviction Lab).
JPML's Pending MDL Reports. The authoritative monthly snapshot of pending multidistrict litigation (JPML).
Federal Register. Where the actual proposed-final-judgment text in cases like the RealPage and Greystar settlements gets published (Federal Register — RealPage Jan. 21, 2026).
The PNAS demographic profile of eviction. The standard demographic dataset linking 38 million eviction cases to Census data (PNAS).
Doctrine
Sealing in civil cases — the federal standard
Federal civil sealing operates under a presumption of openness. The standard articulated across federal circuits requires a court to find that a compelling interest outweighs the public interest in disclosure, and even then to seal only what is strictly necessary. Tennessee's Supreme Court has now articulated a parallel "compelling interest" standard for state-court sealing (see our court-records article). The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure provide the procedural skeleton; the substantive sealing law lives in case law.
The CFPB's May 9, 2025 rescission of 67 interpretive guidance documents — including ones affecting tenant data brokers and the consumer-reporting agency rules — has direct downstream effects on what kinds of civil records appear in tenant-screening reports (National Consumer Law Center)(Federal Register — Data Broker Regulation V).
Practical Guide
Practical guide — three scenarios
If you have an eviction record
Check your state. In Massachusetts, file a petition under M.G.L. c. 239 §16 — the form-and-process page is on Mass.gov (Mass.gov — sealing process). In Pennsylvania, monitor HB 1095's progress on the General Assembly bill-history page (PA Legislature — HB 1095). In California, your unlawful-detainer case may already be masked under CCP §1161.2 — verify with the clerk and request the masking confirmation in writing (California — CCP 1161.2 via AB 1795). In Minnesota, the appeals-court ruling has paused automatic settlement-expungement; the Supreme Court's decision will reset the rule (Minnesota Courts — Sela Investments).
If you're researching a civil case
Start with OPR Court Records for state and federal docket lookups, or OPR Federal Courts for the federal subset specifically. For MDL queries, JPML's pending-MDL reports show consolidation status (JPML). For securities class actions, the Stanford Securities Class Action Clearinghouse + Cornerstone analyses are the standard set (Stanford / Cornerstone). For federal rules in force, the Supreme Court's amendments-order PDF is the authoritative text (Supreme Court — FRCP order).
If you're a tenant screened by a CRA
The FCRA framework still controls. After CFPB's May 9, 2025 rescission of 67 interpretive guidance documents, several consumer-protection layers were removed; NCLC's running tally tracks what survives (NCLC). The proposed Regulation V data-broker rule is in the Federal Register (Federal Register — Reg V).
Pending
What's pending in 2026
Minnesota Supreme Court — Sela Investments. Argued; decision pending. The ruling will set the constitutional floor for automatic-eviction-expungement laws nationally (Minnesota Courts).
Pennsylvania HB 1095. Senate consideration after House passage; second-chamber action expected during the 2026 legislative session (Housing Alliance PA).
South Carolina H 4270. Cleared first hurdle on October 14, 2025; final passage expected in the 2025–2026 session (SC Statehouse — H 4270).
RealPage / Greystar judgments. Federal Register publication started a comment period; final-judgment entry expected mid-2026 (Federal Register).
FCA Civil Rights Fraud Initiative. The IBM settlement was the first; CRS analysis previews additional cases in the pipeline (CRS — FCA enforcement DEI).
The structural shift across all these is the same: which civil records remain a permanent public liability, and which become time-limited? In 2026, that question is being re-answered, simultaneously, by a state legislature, a state appellate court, two federal-court settlement processes, and a brand-new application of the False Claims Act. The architecture of the civil record is being rewritten in real time.