DC Court Records: How to Use eAccess, and DC's Two Separate Relief Tracks

The District of Columbia's court records search, eAccess, is unusually fast by court-portal standards. Docket information and document images are typically available within minutes of being entered or scanned, not the next business day. The tradeoff is that it is demanding about exactly how you search it.

DC also runs two genuinely separate legal tracks for hiding a criminal record from public view, expungement and sealing, and the difference between them matters for anyone trying to understand what a cleared DC record actually shows.

Information last verified on 2026-08-10. This article has not yet been reviewed by a licensed lawyer.

This guide is part of a broader look at court records by state. For the general mechanics of federal versus state versus county searches, see how to look up court records and are court records public.

eAccess: Fast, But Exact

DC Superior Court's eAccess replaced the older, docket-only Court Cases Online tool, and its defining feature is speed. The court system describes docket information and document images as available within minutes of being input or scanned, a near-real-time standard that most state portals do not match; many disclose an update lag of hours or days instead.

That speed comes with a strict input requirement. Case numbers have to be entered in the exact format the court uses, including spacing and leading zeroes, for example a case informally called 17ADM1 has to be entered as 2017 ADM 000001. Name-based searches carry their own quirks: entering a date of death alongside a name search returns results only for probate cases, while entering a date of birth returns results only for criminal cases. Getting these formatting details wrong is the most common reason a real case does not show up in a search.

eAccess search itself is gated by a CAPTCHA step. The court's own disclaimer is direct about the limits of what you get back: the system does not warrant or guarantee the accuracy, legality, reliability, or content of the information. Criminal-case online payments were removed from eAccess effective May 7, 2021; that function moved elsewhere.

Federal Cases: Not on eAccess

DC hosts federal courts, including the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and those cases are not part of eAccess at all. Federal case records in DC live on PACER, the nationwide federal court records system, which charges $0.10 per page with a $3.00 cap per document (transcripts are uncapped) and offers a fee waiver for anyone who accrues $30 or less in charges per quarter.

Certified Copies

This guide does not publish a specific DC certified-copy fee figure, since exact current pricing was not confirmed from a primary source in this session. Requests generally go to the Clerk's Office at the Moultrie Courthouse; confirm current fees and submission methods (email, mail, or in person) directly with the court.

Two Separate Tracks: Expungement and Sealing

DC Code Title 16, Chapter 8 sets up expungement and sealing as two distinct, parallel mechanisms within the same chapter, not two names for the same thing, and confusing them will give a reader the wrong picture of what a DC record shows.

Expungement, covered in Sections 16-802 through 16-804, applies to a specific, narrower category: offenses that have since been decriminalized, legalized, or held unconstitutional, and simple marijuana possession from before February 15, 2015, once the case reached a final disposition and prosecutors do not move to retain the record. Expungement's stated purpose, from Section 16-804, is to restore a person, in the contemplation of law, to the status they occupied before being cited, arrested, charged, or convicted. The same section gives real teeth to that restoration: no person whose record has been expunged shall be held guilty of perjury or otherwise giving a false statement by reason of failing to acknowledge or disclose that citation, arrest, charge, prosecution, or conviction. In practice, that means a person with an expunged DC record may lawfully decline to disclose it, even under oath. Automatic expungement under the statute must occur by October 1, 2027, or within 90 days after the case is terminated or reaches final disposition, whichever is later.

Sealing, covered in Sections 16-805 through 16-807, is broader in the cases it reaches. Automatic sealing applies to cases the prosecutor terminated without a conviction, or that ended in acquittal, and to misdemeanor convictions once at least 10 years have passed since the sentence was completed. Certain categories are excluded from automatic sealing, including intrafamily offenses, sex offenses, and DUI-related cases. The same October 1, 2027, or 90-day deadline applies to automatic sealing.

Sealing carries the same protection against a perjury charge that expungement does. Section 16-807(b) states that no person granted criminal record sealing relief shall be held guilty of perjury or otherwise giving a false statement by reason of failure to recite, acknowledge, or disclose that citation, arrest, charge, prosecution, disposition, or conviction, in response to any inquiry made for any purpose. That is the same protection Section 16-804(b) gives to an expunged record, so on the question most readers care about, whether you have to disclose, the two tracks land in the same place.

The genuine difference is what happens to the record's legal status and who can still reach it. Section 16-804 describes expungement's effect as restoring the person, in the contemplation of law, to the status they held before the citation or arrest. Section 16-807(a) describes sealing's effect more narrowly: it removes the records from public view and permits restricted, nonpublic access by specific parties for specific purposes. Both tracks let the Clerk and the agencies keep a nonpublic, restricted-access file and answer public inquiries by saying no records are available, but the purposes for which a sealed file can be opened are a longer list than the expungement one, and Section 16-807 expressly includes employment decisions, sex offender and gun offender registration, and determining whether a later offense counts as a second or subsequent one.

Those dates describe what DC Code provides, not necessarily what is currently operating. DC Code's own applicability notes attached to Sections 16-802 and 16-805 state that the automatic-expungement and automatic-sealing amendments enacted by Section 101(b) of D.C. Law 24-284 are subject to the inclusion of the law's fiscal effect in an approved budget and financial plan, and they say directly that those amendments have not been implemented. That is the same kind of budget-contingency gap this guide flags for Clean Slate-style automatic relief in states like Connecticut and Oklahoma: the mechanism is enacted law, but confirming it is actually running as of a given date takes checking current funding status with DC Courts or the DC Council, not just reading the statute's stated deadline.

For eligibility detail and the filing process for records that fall outside the automatic tracks, see DC expungement laws, which this guide does not duplicate.

Using DC Court Records the Right Way

eAccess is built for checking a specific case, whether it is your own or one you have a legitimate reason to look into, not for compiling a background file on someone else. If a DC court record is used to screen a job applicant or a tenant, that use is governed separately by the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act. Under 15 U.S.C. § 1681c, a criminal conviction is exempt from the standard seven-year reporting window that applies to most arrests and civil judgments, meaning it can be reported indefinitely unless it has been expunged or sealed under DC law.

Related Resources

Court Records by State covers the full 50-state picture. See also How to Look Up Court Records, Are Court Records Public?, DC Expungement Laws, DC Background Check Laws, DC Warrant Search, and DC Public Records Laws.

Disclaimer

This article provides general information about DC's eAccess system and its two record-relief tracks, expungement and sealing. It is not legal advice. Portal features and statutes change; verify current details with DC Courts or a licensed DC attorney before relying on anything here for a specific situation.

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Last updated: 2026-08-10. Portal facts and fees reflect their published status as of August 2026.