New Colorado law allows courts to suppress records of pending eviction cases

A new Colorado state law requires courts to suppress records of eviction cases while they are moving through the court process and keep them hidden if the tenant wins.

Prior to the law going into effect, eviction filings, regardless of the outcome of the case, automatically created court records, which then could be acquired by third-party screening companies to produce tenant reports for landlords. Now, the only court records that landlords will have access to are the cases that actually result in an eviction.

“The purpose of the law is to ensure that an eviction filing and record by itself is not an impediment to housing,” said Jack Regenbogen, senior attorney for the legal advocacy group Colorado Center on Law and Policy. “A filing for an eviction by itself is not an accurate indication as to what kind of tenant a person is.”

Between 2000 and 2016, 36,240 evictions were filed in Colorado, but only 18,195 resulted in an eviction, according to the Eviction Lab at Princeton University. In other words, only half of the cases filed actually resulted in the tenant needing to vacate their home.

Read more: https://coloradonewsline.com/2020/12/10/new-colorado-law-eviction-records-suppression/