Law Clears Some Past Evictions
Learn more about
ORS 105.164 and find out if your evictions are included.
Words to know before reading this page:
Backlog: Older eviction cases filed with the courts before Dec. 1, 2023.
Discharged: You applied for bankruptcy and the bankruptcy court said you no longer have to pay the debt from your eviction case.
Judgment: The resolution or end of the case.
Money award: When the judge orders someone on one side of a case to pay money to someone on the other side.
Plaintiff: In an eviction case, this is the landlord or someone acting on their behalf.
Satisfied: Someone has paid the money award that a judge ordered them to pay in a case.
Sealed: The case is no longer available as a public record. It should not show up in background checks. New landlords will not see the eviction on your court record.
Set aside: Legally, the eviction never happened. If someone asks you about this eviction, you can say it didn’t happen.
Stipulated judgment: When the two parties agree on how to resolve the case, and the court approves this agreement in writing.
The law (ORS 105.164) applies to certain Oregon residential eviction cases where the court entered a judgment after Jan. 1, 2014.
The state courts have to “set aside” eviction judgments and “seal” the court records for cases that qualify. The courts will do this once a year, starting in December 2024.
First, the courts have to set aside and seal all the eligible cases from 2014 up to Dec. 1, 2023. Then, the courts will repeat this process once a year for any cases that qualify.
When the Oregon legislature passed the law in 2023, the House Committee on Housing and Homelessness wrote: “An eviction can affect a renter’s ability to qualify for another rental and can have downstream effects on homelessness and transitory housing arrangements, health, and/or employment.”
The “set asides” clear evictions that qualify from people’s records.
Check out the chart to see if your case was included.
No. The courts do not have current contact information for all the people whose cases are sealed.
You can look up your record on the free
Oregon Judicial Department Online Records Search. You can search by the record number, if you know it, or by the name you used in the case.
If you’re having trouble finding your case, you can search more broadly by only including the first two letters of your first or last name. The case might be listed under your former name or an alias if you have one. Double-check your name spelling.
If you still can’t find your eviction case in the online search, that probably means it was sealed. If you want to know for sure, you can submit our
Order Request Form to get a copy of the order that sealed it. If your case is still listed in the online records search, it can mean one of two things:
- Your case was not included in this law, OR
- Your case was included, but the Oregon Judicial Department is still working on sealing it.
The Oregon Judicial Department must seal the first group of cases by Dec. 31, 2024.
We have more than 160,000 cases to review. It takes a lot of time to look at each case and decide whether the case should be sealed under this law. We are working hard to complete this process.
We will finish sealing many of the cases by the end of 2024. However, we will not finish sealing the backlog (see the definition at the top of this page) of cases until the end of 2025.
You can ask the courts to give you a copy of the order that sealed your case. To do this, fill out our
Order Request Form.
This order is your proof that legally, the eviction never happened.
It can take up to 90 days for the court to review your request. The court will mail a copy of the order to the address you provide in the online form. If they cannot find your case or need more information, they will mail you a letter.
You can request a copy of the order that sealed your case by filling out our
Order Request Form. This order is the proof that legally, the eviction never happened.
You can show this order to the person who ordered the background check. You can also contact the company doing the background check and ask them to correct your information.
We notify private companies that have data agreements with the state courts about sealed cases. From there, those companies should remove the cases from their records.
However, the courts cannot force those companies to do this.
The courts also cannot control how private companies store or share your case information.
Justice courts are separate from the state circuit courts. However, they still have to follow the same state law for the eviction set-asides.
Contact the justice court where your case was filed to learn more.