✓ Law Verified August 2026
An Illinois eviction record can block apartment applications for years — often regardless of how the case actually ended. This guide answers the question directly for Illinois: whether a sealing law exists here, exactly how to use it if it does, and the real alternatives if it does not. Verified against official Illinois sources as of August 2026.
In This Illinois Guide:
How the Illinois Sealing Law Works
| The law | 735 ILCS 5/9-121 (Code of Civil Procedure, Article IX — “Sealing of court file”), the permanent Illinois eviction-sealing statute, operative on and after August 1, 2022. Illinois’s broader temporary COVID-era sealing statute, 735 ILCS 5/9-121.5 (created by Public Act 102-0005, signed May 17, 2021), was repealed by its own terms effective August 1, 2022. Illinois also permanently seals eviction files against foreclosure-era occupants and month-to-month tenants under 735 ILCS 5/9-207.5 and 735 ILCS 5/15-1701(h)(6). |
| Who qualifies | Two separate tracks. MANDATORY sealing under 9-121(c): the court file must be sealed if the eviction was brought against a tenant under 735 ILCS 5/9-207.5 or as set forth in subdivision (h)(6) of 735 ILCS 5/15-1701 — that is, tenants and occupants who had lawful possession but were displaced because the owner lost the property in a mortgage foreclosure. DISCRETIONARY sealing under 9-121(b): the judge MAY seal any eviction court file if the tenant shows all three of (1) the landlord’s action was sufficiently without a basis in fact or law, which may include a lack of jurisdiction — for example the tenant actually paid the rent claimed, or the tenant was never properly served; (2) sealing is clearly in the interests of justice; and (3) those interests are not outweighed by the public’s interest in knowing about the record. There is no statutory age-of-case cutoff, no “satisfied judgment” track, and no automatic sealing merely because the case was dismissed or the tenant won — the broader 4-ground list (interests of justice, parties agree, no material violation of the tenancy, case dismissed with or without prejudice) existed only under the repealed 9-121.5 and expired July 31, 2022. Sealing that already happened automatically under Public Act 102-0005 for residential cases filed March 9, 2020 through March 31, 2022 remains in effect unless a party moves to unseal. |
| Automatic or petition | PETITION. For cases filed on or after April 1, 2022, nothing seals automatically — the tenant must file a written motion in the eviction case asking the judge to remove the court file from the public record, and appear at a hearing. Even the mandatory 9-121(c) foreclosure category is triggered in practice by the tenant filing a motion to seal; the judge then must grant it. Under 9-121(b) the decision is entirely up to the judge, and sealing is not granted just because the landlord agrees. The one automatic window was historical: residential eviction cases filed March 9, 2020 through March 31, 2022, plus residential eviction files pending and unsealed as of May 17, 2021, were sealed automatically by Public Act 102-0005 without any tenant filing. |
| Waiting period | NONE. 735 ILCS 5/9-121 sets no waiting period and no minimum age of the case; a tenant may move to seal as soon as the case is over. As a practical timing matter, Illinois Legal Aid Online advises filing the Motion to Remove Eviction Court File from Public Record within 30 days of the court date, because a motion filed within 30 days of a final judgment or order is treated as a timely post-judgment motion; motions have still been granted up to 2 years after the court date, but later filings are harder and the judge may require the tenant to explain the delay. |
| Cost | 0 for the forms themselves — the Illinois Supreme Court approved REF forms are free. In Cook County a motion to vacate or modify a final judgment or order in an eviction case filed within 30 days after the judgment or order carries a filing fee of 0. Motion fees outside that 30-day window and in other Illinois circuits vary by county and are UNVERIFIED statewide; ask your Circuit Clerk before filing. If your clerk does charge a fee and you cannot afford it, you may be able to file an Application for Waiver of Court Fees (Illinois approved form APL) and pay nothing. |
Step by Step: Sealing Your Illinois Eviction Record
File in the same Circuit Court and under the same case number as the eviction — you do not open a new case.
Use the Illinois Supreme Court approved statewide eviction form set, which every Illinois Circuit Court must accept: (1) complete the “Motion to Remove Eviction Court File from Public Record” (REF Motion) and the accompanying proposed “Order,” free at ilcourts.info/forms or through the Illinois Legal Aid Online “Remove eviction from public record” Easy Form, which fills the forms out from your answers;
(2) in the motion, state which ground applies — the foreclosure/9-207.5 mandatory ground, or that the landlord’s case had no basis in fact or law (you paid the rent, you were never served, the court lacked jurisdiction) — and explain the harm, since the form expressly lets you argue the record makes it harder to find housing, find a job, or get credit;
(3) file with the Circuit Clerk, by e-filing through the Illinois e-filing system or in person at the courthouse (Illinois Court Help, 833-411-1121, walks self-represented filers through e-filing); (4) serve a copy on the landlord or the landlord’s attorney and complete the Proof of Service; (5) get a court date from the clerk, notify the landlord of it, and appear at the hearing to present the motion;
(6) if granted, take the signed sealing order and confirm with the Circuit Clerk that the file has been removed from public access. Cook County tenants can get free help preparing and presenting the motion through Illinois Legal Aid Online and local legal aid organizations.
What sealing actually does: A sealed eviction court file is removed from public access — it is no longer available to the general public, to online court-record searches, or to the tenant screening and data companies that buy bulk court records and resell them to landlords.
That is the practical point: screening reports are built from public court records, so once the record is out of public view most screening companies lose their source for it.
Sealing does not physically destroy the file; the parties, their attorneys, and the court retain access, and a party can move to unseal. Sealing also does not by itself erase a record a screening company already collected and is still reporting — you must separately dispute that with the screening company under the FCRA and send them a copy of the sealing order.
Illinois has no current statute expressly barring screening companies from disseminating a sealed file; that prohibition was part of the repealed COVID-era framework and of pending bills, not of 9-121 as it stands in 2026. Because 9-121(b) sealing is discretionary, no outcome is guaranteed — many tenants can get relief, especially on the foreclosure ground, but you should check with your court.
Why An Illinois Eviction Record Follows You — and For How Long
An eviction case becomes a public court record the day it is filed — even if you won, even if it was dismissed, even if you moved out voluntarily before the hearing. Tenant screening companies copy these records in bulk and resell them to landlords, which is how an Illinois eviction record from years ago can quietly sink a rental application today.
Under federal reporting rules these records generally stop appearing on screening reports after seven years, but the public court file itself can remain searchable far longer unless it is sealed.
That is why the filing itself, not just the outcome, is what matters — and why sealing laws are spreading state by state. Most landlords never read the court file; they read the one-line summary a screening company sells them. Getting the Illinois eviction record sealed, corrected, or accurately described is what changes that one line.
Check Your Illinois Eviction Record First
Before filing anything, find out what your Illinois eviction record really looks like to a landlord. Search the online case index for the court where the eviction was filed, and request your file from the major tenant screening companies — you are entitled to it.
Tenants are often surprised in both directions: some discover the case they worry about was never reported, others find a case they had forgotten, or one that is not even theirs.
Knowing exactly what appears, and how it is described, tells you whether to pursue sealing, a dispute, or both.
Screening reports are also where errors live. A dismissed case reported as an eviction, an old address matched to the wrong person, or a paid judgment still shown as owing are all fixable — and fixing the report is sometimes faster than any court process in Illinois.
Your Federal Rights Against Tenant Screening Companies
Tenant screening companies are consumer reporting agencies under the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act, 15 USC 1681 and following, so you have dispute rights even if your record is never sealed.
If a landlord denies you, raises your rent or deposit, or requires a co-signer because of a screening report, that is an adverse action: the landlord must tell you which company supplied the report and give you its name, address, and phone number, and you are entitled to a free copy of that report from the company if you request it within 60 days.
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You are also entitled to one free report every 12 months from each nationwide specialty consumer reporting agency, including tenant screening companies, on request.
To dispute, send a written dispute directly to the screening company identifying each wrong item and attaching proof — the court docket showing dismissal, the order vacating a default judgment, a satisfaction of judgment, the sealing order, or proof the case was against a different person with a similar name.
Under 15 USC 1681i the company must conduct a reasonable reinvestigation and resolve the dispute within 30 days, extended to 45 days if you supply additional relevant information during that 30-day period, and it must forward all relevant information to whoever furnished the item.
Anything found inaccurate, incomplete, or unverifiable must be deleted or corrected within that window, and the company must send you written results plus a free corrected report.
You can require the company to notify anyone who received the report in the last 6 months for tenant screening purposes. Under 15 USC 1681c, most civil suits and civil judgments cannot be reported after 7 years, so an old eviction judgment past 7 years is disputable as obsolete. If the company reinserts the item, it must notify you in writing within 5 business days.
You may also add a 100-word consumer statement to your file, and you can complain to the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau at consumerfinance.gov/complaint and to the Illinois Attorney General’s Consumer Fraud Bureau at 1-800-386-5438.
Timing matters more than tenants expect. If you are apartment-hunting right now, start the screening-report disputes today — they run on federal deadlines and cost nothing — while any Illinois court process moves in parallel. If the move is months away, that is enough time for most sealing petitions, vacated judgments, or corrected reports to finish before a landlord ever pulls your Illinois eviction record.
Worth watching in Illinois: Pending in the 104th General Assembly (2025-2026): SB 3753, introduced February 5, 2026 by the Senate, would amend the Landlord and Tenant Act so that in any eviction proceeding where the trier of fact determines the tenant complied with the terms of the last written and signed lease as to the amount and timeliness of rent payments, the proceedings shall be sealed;
as of May 15, 2026 it remained in the Senate Executive Committee at roughly 25 percent progression with a committee deadline of May 22, 2026, and its final disposition as of August 20, 2026 is UNVERIFIED — check the Illinois General Assembly site before relying on it.
HB 3566 (104th GA) would require dismissal of an eviction complaint in its entirety against all defendants where a named defendant was a minor at filing or at the time the lease was entered, and would require that such an action be immediately sealed; status as of August 20, 2026 is UNVERIFIED.
The broader eviction-sealing expansion carried in earlier sessions as HB 1569 and SB 242 — which would have sealed eviction records older than 7 years, dismissed and sealed open cases with no party action for 180 days, and prohibited tenant screening companies from disseminating information about a sealed court file — has not been enacted.
Cook County: the Circuit Court of Cook County issued a general administrative notice implementing Public Act 102-0005 sealing, and motions to unseal COVID-period cases (March 9, 2020 through March 31, 2022) may be brought where the case was not in whole or part related to nonpayment of rent during that period and the interests of justice in sealing do not outweigh the public interest in a public record.
Statewide help line: Illinois Court Help, 833-411-1121.
HB 2299 from the 101st General Assembly, which would have required clerks to immediately impound every residential eviction file at filing and to redact tenant names, was never enacted — Illinois has no automatic impoundment-at-filing rule.
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Official Illinois Sources & Resources
- Illinois Courts Self-Help: illinoiscourts.gov/documents-and-forms/approved-forms/circui…
- Illinois Statute: ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/fulltext.asp?DocName=073500050K9-1…
- U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development: hud.gov
- Cornell Legal Information Institute: law.cornell.edu/wex
Taking Control of Your Illinois Eviction Record
An Illinois eviction record is not a life sentence — it is a document, and documents can be sealed, corrected, or accurately explained. The tenants who struggle longest are usually the ones who never look at what their Illinois eviction record actually says, so start by pulling the court file and your screening reports.
Whether Illinois offers sealing or only the federal dispute route, acting on the Illinois eviction record beats hoping landlords will not check — they almost always do. A short, honest cover letter to a prospective landlord explaining the circumstances can also do real work while the record process runs.
This Illinois eviction record guide was last verified against official sources in August 2026. Sealing laws are changing fast — new states pass them every year, so re-check before relying on this page.
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Disclaimer: This guide is informational only and is not legal advice. Landlord-tenant laws change and vary by city and county within a state. Verify current rules with your state, your local court, or a free legal-aid office before acting. If you are facing eviction, contact a local tenant attorney or legal-aid organization right away.