State Supreme Court to Decide How Long Should Someone's Eviction History be Available to the Public?

Tuesday, September 12th, 2023 -- 11:01 AM

(By Sarah Lehr, Wisconsin Public Radio) For how long should someone's eviction history be available to the public? 

According to Sarah Lehr with the Wisconsin Public Radio, the Wisconsin Supreme Court is considering that question as it weighs a proposed change to record-keeping rules. Per current statewide court policy, records from most eviction cases have to be retained for 20 years after a case was closed.

But tenant advocates said that policy is trapping low-income Wisconsinites in poverty, by making it difficult for them to be approved for new housing. A petition from Legal Action of Wisconsin would change the rules, so that eviction records would need to be kept for only one year in cases where there was no monetary judgment against a tenant.

After that time period, such records would be scrubbed from the Wisconsin-wide circuit court website. It might still be possible for the records to be accessed in-person at a courthouse, however, after that year elapses.

Wisconsin's record retention policy outlines minimum timeframes for keeping documents, but doesn't mandate that the records be destroyed once that period ends. As Milwaukee Circuit Court Judge Kevin Martens noted in a letter to the Supreme Court clerk, "Many counties do not purge on a regular basis and do so only when staff is available."

Still, several tenant advocates told justices the policy would help Wisconsinites with eviction histories, since many landlords rely solely on the statewide court website. And Brian Michael, an attorney who formerly worked for the Legal Aid Society of Milwaukee, said those online eviction records often tell an incomplete story.

"Support for this position comes from those five years representing defendants in eviction actions and witnessing the relegation of these individuals to second-class housing that is oftentimes unsafe, unhealthy and unaffordable ... based on a history which may have no relevancy to their ability to maintain and uphold this contract that they're entering into with the new landlord," Gross said.

Under the proposed changes, eviction records that did include a money judgment would still need to be kept for 20 years, which mirrors the current retention schedule for most records from other types of civil small claims cases.

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