South Carolina Eviction Record Sealing 2027: Filings Removed From the Public Index After 7 Years

This law doesn't change how an eviction case is filed, heard, or decided; it specifically addresses how long a filing remains visible in the public court index afterward.

[Cite: H.4270, Act No. 214 of 2026]

A property manager's actual eviction process, the notice requirements, the hearing, the judgment, continues exactly as before; what changes is how long that case's record stays searchable by the public once it's over.

Records qualifying under this law are removed from the public index automatically after the 7-year period, without requiring the tenant to file a petition or take any action.

[Cite: H.4270, Act No. 214 of 2026]

That automatic design matters because a petition-based system would have left the protection available only to tenants who knew about it and had the resources to pursue it; an automatic mechanism reaches every qualifying case regardless of whether the tenant ever learns the law exists.

The law covers eviction filings and records made under Section 27-40-10 or 27-37-10, including cases concluded by an order of eviction, a writ of ejectment, a case resolved by settlement, or a judgment resolved by subsequent payment.

[Cite: S.C. Code 30-2-60, as enacted by Act No. 214 of 2026]

That list is broad enough to cover a tenant who lost the case outright, one who settled with the landlord, and one who paid off a judgment after the fact; the common thread is that the case reached some form of final disposition, not that the tenant necessarily prevailed.

The removal period runs from the case's final disposition, the point the case actually concluded, rather than from the original filing date.

[Cite: S.C. Code 30-2-60, as enacted by Act No. 214 of 2026]

A case that took months to resolve, through a hearing, an appeal, or a payment arrangement, has its 7-year clock measured from when that process actually ended, not from the day the eviction notice was first filed in court.

The removal applies only if no additional filing is recorded against that tenant in the 7 years following the final disposition.

[Cite: S.C. Code 30-2-60, as enacted by Act No. 214 of 2026]

A tenant with one eviction case that concluded 7 years ago, but who faced a second eviction filing 3 years into that window, doesn't get the original case removed on its original timeline; a new filing against the same tenant disrupts the clean 7-year run this provision requires.

The article reporting on this law's enactment specifically noted the court may continue to retain the record internally, even after it's removed from the public index.

[Cite: South Carolina Public Radio, "Governor signs bill that seals eviction records in SC," May 20, 2026]

A tenant shouldn't assume a removed filing is gone from every system; what the law guarantees is that the general public, including a landlord running a routine background search, can no longer find it through the standard public index.

One of the bill's sponsors specifically said the law isn't intended to hide rental history from a landlord conducting a legitimate screening process.

[Cite: South Carolina Public Radio, "Governor signs bill that seals eviction records in SC," May 20, 2026]

That legislative framing suggests the law's target is the broad, permanent public visibility of old filings, not a landlord's ability to screen a current applicant through whatever channels remain available; the exact scope of what access survives wasn't fully detailed in the sources reviewed for this article.

This law doesn't take effect until January 1, 2027, roughly 8 months after the governor's signature.

[Cite: H.4270, Act No. 214 of 2026]

That gap gives the court system and any screening companies that pull from public indexes time to adjust their processes before the automatic removal requirement actually starts operating on qualifying cases.

Since this law governs what the public court index itself displays, a property manager's own internal tenant files and any third-party screening reports pulled before a record's removal aren't automatically updated by this law.

[Cite: H.4270, Act No. 214 of 2026]

A property manager relying on an old screening report that was pulled before a qualifying record's removal date should understand that report may reflect information the public index no longer shows going forward; screening practices built around current index data will naturally track the law's effect over time.

This law specifically addresses the public visibility window for eviction filings; it doesn't change the broader legal framework governing how a landlord can use eviction history in a screening decision.

[Cite: H.4270, Act No. 214 of 2026]

A landlord's screening criteria and any fair housing obligations tied to how eviction history factors into a rental decision continue to apply independent of this law; what changes is simply how long a given filing remains visible through the standard public channel.

The practical starting point is understanding that public eviction-record searches conducted after January 1, 2027, may no longer surface qualifying filings older than 7 years with no further activity, and building that expectation into screening timelines and vendor conversations.

For any screening vendor or background-check service a property manager relies on, confirming how that vendor's own data refresh cycle accounts for this law's automatic removal mechanism helps avoid relying on stale index data that no longer matches what the public court system actually shows.