One year in, backers of Massachusetts’s eviction sealing law say there is promise — and an awareness problem

AFTER MORE THAN a decade of advocacy, a new law took effect a year ago that lets tenants petition to seal the court records of past eviction cases. The biggest roadblock for implementation turns out to be that almost no one knows the option exists.

Massachusetts courts logged more than a million eviction case filings since 1988. In the year since the law took effect last May, just 6,284 petitions to seal cases have been filed.

Advocates see both promise in the process and plenty of work to be done to make tenants aware of their right to seek to have past eviction cases – the “Scarlet E” – sealed from public view.

“Few people actually know about the law,” said Annette Duke, senior housing attorney at the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, which helped develop the legislation and has led outreach since it took effect. “If you had an eviction 20 years ago or 10 years ago, you may not be paying attention.”

The eviction sealing law, included in the Affordable Homes Act signed by Gov. Maura Healey in August 2024, gives tenants the right to petition courts to remove certain eviction records from public view. An eviction record — even from a case a tenant won, or that was dismissed — shows up in the public court database and in the paid screening algorithms most landlords use to screen applicants.

The process for sealing the record depends on the outcome of the case, the type of eviction case, and whether the appeal period has passed. Broadly, cases where the tenant won or the case was dismissed can be sealed immediately, but if the eviction involved an agreement to pay late rent or claims of some sort of criminal activity, there can be additional steps during court proceedings.

Black renters in Massachusetts are on average 2.4 times more likely to have an eviction filed against them than white renters, a disparity that is wider for Black women.