South Carolina Court Records: County Public Index Search and Expungement

This article covers how to search South Carolina court records county by county, the state's new home-address redaction rule, what's public versus restricted, and how South Carolina's expungement statute works. It does not cover other states; for those, see the Court Records by State hub.

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

How to Search South Carolina Court Records

South Carolina's Case Records Search, run by the South Carolina Judicial Branch, is structured around individual counties rather than a single combined database. The landing page lets you find a court by county, city, or zip code, and routes you to that county's own Public Index page, one for each of South Carolina's 46 counties. Using a web browser that supports cookies and JavaScript, and having those features enabled, is stated as a requirement for the search to work. It is free; no fee language appears on the landing page.

South Carolina's appellate courts sit on a separate system entirely, C-Track Public Access, described by the Judicial Branch as a public access site for the South Carolina Appellate Court Case Management System. It covers appeals from the Court of Common Pleas, the Court of General Sessions, administrative tribunals, certiorari proceedings, and certification of questions of law, with data generally available for cases pending or filed on or after May 1, 2012. Like the county-level Public Index, it is explicitly free, described by the Judicial Branch as a free public service. If you are looking for an appeal rather than a trial-court case, C-Track is the right tool, not the county Public Index.

A time-sensitive change worth knowing about: as of January 1, 2026, home address information no longer displays on the public index, for both new and existing cases. If you are used to older South Carolina search results showing an address, that field is now gone across the board.

What's Public and What's Restricted

South Carolina Rule 41.2, SCRCP, sets specific redaction requirements for anything filed with the court. Social Security numbers, taxpayer identification numbers, driver's license numbers, passport numbers, and other personal identifying numbers must be redacted in full, with only the last four digits of a financial account number allowed to appear. Minors get two different levels of protection depending on the case: if a minor is the victim of a sexual assault or the victim in an abuse or neglect case, the minor's name must be completely redacted, and in all other cases the minor's first name and the first initial of the last name (John S.), or the minor's initials alone (J.S.), should be used. Non-parties', minors', and victims' home addresses are reduced to city and state only, and dates of birth are reduced to the year of birth only.

The responsibility for getting this right sits with the person filing, not the court: the clerks of court and their staff will not review filings for redaction or to determine if materials should be sealed, and the responsibility for ensuring that information is redacted or sealed rests with counsel and the parties. A separate rule, Rule 41.1, SCRCP, governs motions to seal a document entirely inside an active case, distinct from the ordinary redaction requirements of Rule 41.2.

The court rule is not the only source of that duty. S.C. Code Section 30-2-330 separately provides that a person preparing or filing a document to be recorded or filed in the official records by the register of deeds or the clerk of court of a county may not include an individual's social security, driver's license, state identification, passport, checking account, savings account, credit card, or debit card number, unless expressly required by law or court order. A violation is a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of up to five hundred dollars for each violation. So a filer who leaves a Social Security number in a South Carolina filing is breaking a statute, not only a rule of civil procedure.

If your information is already showing, there is a remedy and it costs nothing. Rule 41.2 lets a person whose protected information was improperly disclosed ask for it to be removed, and Section 30-2-330(B) grants the same right by statute: an individual, or his attorney-in-fact or legal guardian, may request that a clerk of court remove those identifying numbers from an image or copy of an official record placed on a publicly available internet site. The request must be in writing, legibly signed by the requester, and delivered to the clerk by mail, facsimile, electronic transmission, or in person. Under both the rule and the statute, a fee must not be charged for the redaction. Note the limit on what the statutory right reaches: Section 30-2-330(B) is aimed at the online display of the record, not at the underlying document already filed in the case.

The Judicial Branch's public-facing systems also carry a standard reliability caveat: the state does not assume liability for inaccurate or delayed data, errors, or omissions on the public index, and recent entries may not be immediately reflected there.

Expungement in South Carolina

South Carolina's general term is expungement, governed by the Uniform Expungement of Criminal Records statute, South Carolina Code Title 17, Chapter 22, Article 9, beginning at Section 17-22-910. Applications for expungement of criminal records are administered by the solicitor's office in each judicial circuit, not by a single statewide office, which mirrors the county-by-county structure of the search system itself. The statute covers multiple offense categories, including cases resolved through pretrial intervention, certain drug convictions, and summary court dismissals, each with its own eligibility conditions handled at the circuit level.

This article covers the general framework, not eligibility for a specific offense. For the eligibility tests and process for a particular charge, see South Carolina Expungement Laws.

Certified Copies and Practical Search Tips

Because South Carolina's search is organized by county, start with the county where the case was actually filed rather than guessing; the statewide landing page's county, city, or zip lookup will route you to the right Public Index. For a certified copy, contact the Clerk of Court for that same county. Given the January 2026 home-address change, do not expect an address field on results going forward, including for older cases that may have shown one previously.

Using This Information the Right Way

A South Carolina court-record search is meant for looking up your own case or a matter you have a legitimate reason to check, not for screening a job applicant or tenant. A county-level name search is not a Fair Credit Reporting Act compliant background check on its own, and because coverage is split across 46 separate county systems, a clean result from one county says nothing about a case filed in a different one.

Related reading: Court Records by State, How to Look Up Court Records, Are Court Records Public?, South Carolina Background Check Laws, South Carolina Warrant Search, and South Carolina Public Records Laws for records held by executive-branch agencies rather than the courts.

Disclaimer

This article provides general legal information about South Carolina court records, not legal advice, and does not create an attorney-client relationship. Portal names, coverage, and fee information reflect their published status as of the verification date above and can change without notice. For advice about a specific case, expungement eligibility, or a specific record, consult a lawyer licensed in South Carolina.

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