Court Records: Public Access, Redaction, and Sealing

Why are court records open in the first place?

Public access to court proceedings and filings is one of the oldest features of the American legal system. It rests on a common law right of access to judicial records and, for criminal proceedings in particular, on constitutional doctrine developed by the Supreme Court. The reasoning is that courts exercise public power, and a public cannot evaluate that power if it cannot see how it was used.

The practical effect is a default rule that reverses the intuition most people bring. Nothing has to justify being public. Everything that is withheld has to justify itself. A judge asked to close a file does not weigh whether the public has a good reason to see it; the judge weighs whether the party has a good enough reason to keep it hidden.

That default is not absolute. Legislatures close certain categories entirely, courts protect narrow classes of personal information by rule, judges retain authority to seal particular documents in individual cases, and appellate courts review those decisions when someone objects to them. But each of these is an exception operating against an open baseline, which is why sealing motions that simply assert embarrassment or inconvenience fail.

What has to be redacted before a document is filed?

Federal courts and most state courts place the redaction duty on the filing party rather than the clerk. Clerks do not read filings for privacy problems, and they will accept a document with a full Social Security number printed across it. If that happens, the number is public until someone notices.

Redaction means removing the data from the document, not covering it. A black rectangle drawn over text in a document editor frequently leaves the underlying characters selectable and searchable in the resulting file. Courts have had to unseal and refile documents for exactly this reason. Flatten the file or use a redaction tool that deletes the text layer.

Some material is exempt from the redaction requirement, which surprises people who expect it to be universal. Financial account numbers in a bankruptcy filing, records of an administrative proceeding attached as an exhibit, and certain filings in forfeiture and criminal matters are treated differently in the federal rules. State rules add categories of their own, so read the local rule rather than assuming the federal list transfers.

Where a party genuinely needs the unredacted version in the record, the usual mechanism is to file the redacted document publicly and lodge an unredacted copy under seal or with the court in a reference filing. That way the judge and the opposing party see the complete document while the public docket carries only the redacted one.

Which records are closed automatically?

Some categories are withheld by statute or rule without anyone filing a motion. These are the areas where legislatures decided in advance that the harm of disclosure outweighs the value of access, and the closure applies to the whole class rather than case by case.

• Juvenile delinquency proceedings — closed or heavily restricted in nearly every state.
• Adoption files — sealed by statute, with access rules that differ sharply from state to state.
• Grand jury materials — protected by rule, with narrow exceptions requiring a court order.
• Search warrant affidavits during an investigation — often sealed until the investigation closes.
• Expunged or set-aside convictions — removed from public access where a statute authorizes it.

Adoption is the clearest example of how much variation a single category can hold. Whether an adopted adult can obtain the sealed original birth certificate depends entirely on the state, and the rules have moved considerably over time. That question is addressed in the answer on access to adoption records and original birth certificates.

How do you actually ask a court to seal something?

A sealing request is a motion, and it succeeds or fails on specificity. Courts generally ask whether there is a compelling interest that outweighs public access, whether the harm from disclosure is concrete rather than speculative, whether the request is narrowly tailored, and whether a less restrictive alternative such as redaction would serve.

Write the motion to answer those questions in order. Identify the exact document, page or line rather than the case. Name the harm in real terms: a trade secret that competitors would use, a medical condition, an address that a person under a protective order needs kept private, a cooperating witness's identity. Then explain why redacting that item is not enough, if you are asking for more than redaction.

Expect the request to be decided in a public order, and in many courts expect the motion itself to be public. Some courts require a public notice of the sealing request so that the press or another party can object. Filing the sensitive material as an exhibit to a public motion, before the judge has ruled, is a common and avoidable mistake.

Where do you look for a case record?

Federal district, bankruptcy and appellate cases are docketed in a single electronic system, searchable nationally, with documents retrievable per page for a fee. Written judicial opinions are exempt from that fee, and a separate government publishing service carries the full text of published federal opinions at no charge.

State cases are the harder problem, because there is no national state system. Each state, and sometimes each county, runs its own portal with its own scope, its own search fields and its own coverage cutoff. Older cases are frequently not online at all and exist only as paper or microfilm at the courthouse or a state archive.

Family cases sit in state courts and follow those rules, which is why a divorce decree usually has to be ordered from the clerk of the granting court rather than found online. The mechanics of that request are covered in the answer on obtaining marriage and divorce records. A name change proceeding is likewise a public state court matter unless a statute or an order provides otherwise, a point that matters for the sequencing described in the answer on updating identity documents.

Is everything available online the same as at the courthouse?

No, and the difference catches people out. Judicial policy in the federal system limits remote electronic access to documents in certain sensitive case types, most notably Social Security appeals and immigration matters, where non-parties can view the docket sheet remotely but must go to the courthouse to read the filings themselves.

The reasoning is that practical obscurity once did real privacy work. A record technically open but held in a single county courthouse was seen by almost nobody. The same record posted online is indexed, aggregated, resold and permanently attached to a person's name. Courts have responded by keeping some material open in principle while limiting how easily it can be harvested.

Commercial background screening sits on top of all this. Private companies compile court data and sell it, and their files can be stale, mismatched or wrong in ways the court's own record is not. Correcting a commercial report is a separate process from correcting a court file, and correcting a federal criminal history record is different again, as described in the answer on challenging a federal background record.