 My name is Julia Panville. I'm the Director of the Future of Land and Housing Program at New York National. And I'm so excited to open this discussion on the topic of eviction record ceiling, which has been sweeping across the country over the last few years. So far, at least eight states have passed eviction record ceiling laws. And eviction ceiling legislation is being considered in several other cities and states across the country. In fact, I just learned today that I'm sponsored is the latest state to be considering eviction ceiling legislation. Eviction ceiling legislation does exactly what it sounds like. It seals eviction records, most often records of evictions that are dismissed. These laws protect tenants by limiting the ability of tenants screening companies to access eviction filing data and sell it to landlords locking tenants, even those who ultimately have their evictions dismissed, out of future housing opportunities. At the same time, eviction ceiling laws can obscure access to court records, which are the primary data source for tracking evictions and informing policies to prevent them. We're hosting this discussion today to shed light on this wave of legislation, discuss why it's so critical, but also talk about how to balance the need for protection of tenants with the need for preserving data officers. We'll start by hearing from two national experts about why eviction record ceiling is urgent and necessary and what they've seen in regards to this national trend. Natasha Duarte from the organization Upturn will share the context on why eviction record ceiling is so urgent and necessary and also elevate Upturn's new guidance for ceiling laws. Marie Claire Tran-Leong will then share more about the momentum that record ceiling legislation has gathered, including common trends across states. After Marie Claire and Natasha present, I'll turn it over to my colleague Sabiha Zainovi who will moderate a discussion between two jurisdictions that have recently passed eviction ceiling legislation. Scott Davis, the public information officer for the Maricopa County Justice Court will share his experience as well as Brittany Ruffin, Director of Policy and Advocacy for the Washington Legal Clinic on the Homeless in Washington, D.C. Brittany and Scott will be joined by Marie Claire and Natasha. We'll have a panel discussion with the four of them and then leave some room for questions and answers. Please submit your Q and A throughout the duration of the event using the slider interface. Welcome everyone and we look forward to a fruitful discussion. I'm Natasha Duarte. I work at Upturn. We are a small nonprofit based in D.C. and we do research and advocacy to advance justice in the design use and governance of technology including in housing. And so I'm here to talk about eviction ceiling of course and in short, I think states need to be aggressive about ceiling eviction records because tenant screening companies are aggressive about collecting and selling those eviction records to landlords. As soon as landlords file for eviction and those filings go up on a court website, data brokers are collecting those records and storing them in databases where they may or may not get updated as the case progresses. And then those tenants screening companies market their services to landlords saying, hey, as a landlord, you need to protect your investment and the safety of your neighbors and you're taking a huge risk if you rent to someone you know nothing about. They can hurt your property or your neighbors and you might be forced to evict them which is gonna cost you a lot of money. But don't worry, tenant screening companies are saying to landlords because our reports tell you everything you need to know to make a safe and reliable choice. So it's this one to punch of marketing that tenant screening companies are doing where you need to be afraid but buy our services and we'll tell you if someone's a good tenant. And the so-called insights in these tenant screening reports come almost entirely from eviction records, criminal records and credit information. And as we know, all three of these records are products of systemically racist, sexist and ableist systems. Tenant screening companies repackage this data, they often summarize it so that for example, a dismissed eviction filing might just become eviction record found on a tenant screening report. They often translate it into a numerical score or a risk assessment like a red, yellow or green light so a landlord can do even less of their own analysis. One company for example, called National Tenant Network on their website, they have a sample tenant screening report you can look at and in that report, the hypothetical tenant gets a failing score from National Tenant Network seemingly entirely on the basis of an eviction record. So tenant screening companies are encouraging landlords to defer to these scores and to the records on which they're based to make their decisions. And landlords do defer to them. Won Young So is a researcher at MIT. He recently published a paper showing that landlords tend to follow a blanket screening policy of rejecting tenants based on eviction records even when they can see that the eviction record was dismissed and that they tend to follow tenant screening companies risk recommendations. So tenant screening in general takes existing markers of housing insecurity and injustice, processes them and generates more housing insecurity along the profits for the industry. And while it's very important to regulate landlords conduct, which is being done across the country through what are known as fair chance housing laws to restrict what landlords can use to screen tenants. Unfortunately, we can't rely on those kinds of laws alone. Enforcement of those laws is limited by factors like tenants not being able to see a full view into the tenant screening process, not having the time or resources to pursue a complaint because they're trying to find housing and they just wanna sort of move on and apply to the next housing opportunity. And landlords providing pretextual reasons for rejecting tenants. So tenant screening companies also regularly publish reports of errors which landlords are unlikely to spot and they sometimes obscure or exclude mitigating information like the fact that a case was dismissed or that it happened a long time ago that could theoretically nudge a landlord not to put so much weight on it. So as a harm reduction step, cutting off access to eviction records at the source has the potential to help a lot more people qualify for housing and it's an important compliment to fair chance housing law, so we need both. So how do you write a law to seal eviction records in your state? It depends on where you live, there are local nuances, but I did write a report with my colleague, Tanuola Dada who has now moved on to Yale Law School where we tried to address some common questions that are going to come up pretty much anywhere you're trying to write and pass eviction record ceiling. We were heavily informed by what we learned from local housing advocates in DC who successfully passed a tenant screening and eviction record ceiling law here, including Britt who you'll hear from later on the panel. Our top recommendation is to seal eviction records immediately at the point of filing so they never become public. And we're far from the first or only people to recommend that, but it is key to stopping data brokers from getting their hands on the records before a case can even be decided. We also recommend talking to local courts early in the process so you can find out what kinds of technologies and systems they're working with, how you can craft your law to work with existing systems and where you'll need to push those systems to change. We definitely don't have all the answers and so I'm really glad we're here today to tackle some of the questions about how to seal eviction records without undermining eviction defense work which often makes use of housing court records as well as other housing justice organizing efforts that might rely on eviction data. And as we discuss in our issue brief, these goals don't have to be at odds. Depending on what the needs for data are and how things work in a given jurisdiction, there are policy tools and there are technology tools that we can use to thread this needle so we can have sealing and we can have effective eviction defense and housing justice organizing. So I can't wait to get into talking about how to do that with the others on the panel today and thanks for having me. So my name is Marie Claire Tran Leung. I issue her pronouns and I am the evictions initiative project director at the National Housing Law Project. The National Housing Law Project is a national law and policy organization focused on the rights of low income tenants and housing. And as part of the work that we do is that we host the Housing Justice Network which is comprised of nearly 2000 legal services attorneys and tenant advocates from across the country. And in that work, we have a sense of what a lot of our members are working on both in direct services and also at the policy level. And a number of our members are really focused on eviction sealing right now in their state local local jurisdiction. And we are seeing really the momentum continue to gather around this type of legislation across the states. Natasha mentioned earlier the idea of sealing evictions at the time of filing. And we do have sometimes point to California as being sort of a pioneer in the space. They have had eviction masking for a number of years and in 2016 enacted legislation that would automatically seal eviction filings unless the plaintiff landlord prevailed within 60 days. In 2020, Colorado joined California in passing a law that would seal eviction filings and records of cases where the tenants prevailed. And where the plaintiff prevails, the case information becomes public unless the parties agree otherwise. I think in a lot of ways automatic sealing is part of the ideal, especially at the time of filing. But we also know that in a number of states and jurisdictions, the infrastructure and in some cases, the political will is not widely available. And so we have been working with states and local or advocates in different states and localities who are trying to push some of these in the way that their jurisdictions are set up. And so there is a lot of movement at least towards the broader goal. One sort of broader trend I just wanted to sort of lay out there is I think in the earlier days of the pandemic, a number of jurisdictions enacted at least temporary sealing measures out of a recognition that the eviction records that came out of those early days shouldn't be used against individuals as they try to obtain housing in the future. So in New Jersey, for example, eviction records from April 2020 to August 2021 are sealed. Similarly, Illinois has automatic sealing of eviction records between the two-year period between March of 2020 and March of 2022. And Nevada as well also had, also seals records of summary evictions for non-payment of rent during the pandemic. And a lot of the advocates in many of those places right now are trying to look at how to make some of those temporary measures more permanent and to make them a permanent feature of their court systems. And some of the issues that I think our members have brought up in the course of working on these measures is questions around how the sealing is triggered or how the sealing takes place. We have a number of jurisdictions who rely on petitions in order to have the record sealed. And I think as was stated earlier, automatic sealing is preferred. I think in the long run, there will be less administrative costs to both the tenant and the courts. However, in order to do that, there's a lot of upfront costs and investments that some courts may not currently be ready to make. And that may require additional legislation or appropriations that takes time to gather, I think at the state level. And in the meantime, we have a number of jurisdictions who are trying to make progress with the petition model and using that as a way to open the door for automatic sealing down the line. The other thing I just wanted to note is I think, I think today we'll talk about legislation in a number of places. And I also wanted to note just that for some, in some of the work that we've done, we've also seen places where advocates are trying to make changes, where legislation may not be available because of the political landscape. And so in some places there have been success in trying to rely upon the inherent authority of state courts to enact some sort of relief around eviction records and trying to appeal to state courts where the state legislatures may not be a viable source of protection. And others where there might not be as much level, as much success at the state courts, there are some efforts to be made at the local county level. And again, I think all of these efforts in our network I think have been coming together to try to just really find relief on the ground for tenants as where we can find them. Today, we'll spend time talking about the balance between privacy interests and access for research and policy development. And that is very much at the forefront of a lot of the work that our advocates have been doing. And then the last thing I just wanted to bring up is, I think for a number of folks who have worked sort of in the criminal record space for a number of years, there have been a lot of progress there that could potentially be models. It's not apples to apples in terms of the comparison, but I think in places like Pennsylvania where they have been able to create a clean slate initiative where there is automatic sealing of criminal records, advocates there have been trying to see where there might be a potential for building upon that model or modifying that model in the eviction court system where there might already be infrastructure for the criminal record space. And then ultimately, I think with many of the advocates that we work with, eviction sealing is part of a broader infrastructure of eviction prevention protections that Natasha alluded to looking at protection such as anti-discrimination on the basis of eviction records, looking at how this could work with eviction diversion and mediation programs and broader rights of counsel for tenants to help maintain balance of power or achieve balance of power in the court system between landlords and tenants. So just having, I think keeping in mind that eviction sealing I think is just a one, I think tool in the broader toolbox and understanding how that can operate in this infrastructure I think is really important. And so with that, I think I'll turn things over to Sabiha. Thank you so much, Marie Claire and Natasha, that was really helpful context on both why eviction records sealing is urgent and necessary and why we're seeing so many cities and counties and states take up legislation across the country right now. So my name is Sabiha Zainalbhai and I am a senior policy analyst at the Future of Land and Housing Program at New America. And this next panel is titled How to Preserve Access to Eviction Data While Protecting Tenant Privacy. And in addition to Natasha and Marie Claire, we'll be hearing from Scott Davis, the Public Information Officer from Maricopa County Justice Courts and Britt Ruffin, the Director of Policy and Advocacy at the Washington Legal Center, sorry, Legal Clinic for the Homeless in Washington, D.C. And so during today's panel, the goal is really to learn from their experiences both during the drafting process of eviction records sealing legislation and during the implementation phase to gain some insights and learn a little bit more and potentially apply lessons learned from these experiences to other cities and states grappling with some of these tensions. So it's already been well laid out that eviction records are harm, the future housing security of tenants and that eviction record sealing is necessary and urgent to prevent that discrimination. But at the same time, the primary data source for evictions since they're run through our county court systems is can be partially obscured if eviction record sealing laws are not designed and implemented carefully. So today we just wanted to spend a little bit more time talking about the experience of cities and states that have grappled with exactly this. So I'm gonna ask questions to the panel. Everyone should feel all direct questions to specific panelists, but everyone should feel free to weigh in if they have something to share. And just as a reminder for the audience, feel free to drop questions for the Q&A session after this panel into the Slido feature. So to start, I'm gonna start with Scott and Britt. Can you just share a little bit more about the eviction record sealing law that was recently passed in Arizona and Washington, DC and a little bit more about what the sealing regime entails. Britt, would you like to go first since it seems like you all did that before we did? Sure, no problem. So the eviction sealing law in DC actually was coupled with some larger legislation that involved tenant protection rights as well for applicants, but the specific portion of the eviction record sealing law, it makes sure that there's a process that eviction case records are sealed with automatically. So if they're sealed automatically in two parts. So they're actually sealed automatically within 30 days if there's case resolution where there's no judgment for a landlord and then three years automatically if there is a judgment for the landlord. But there's also a set of eight factors by which a person can upon motion request that their records be sealed as well. And so that's the setup for our law currently, but it also allows tenants and their attorneys and their future attorneys to have non-public access to copies of their seal records. And it still includes allowing researchers to access that data with protections there for personal identifiable information. And that was a key portion because a lot of the information as you stated that we have on evictions and even getting to the point of knowing how effective it is to seal and to make sure that people are having the greater access to getting housing. Were studies that a specific study that came out of Georgetown, but in here in DC that looked at the evictions in DC and how problematic they were and the things that they were being filed for and that they were being filed and some of them didn't even go through but it really had a significant impact on the housing market and people's access to housing. That's fascinating. All of the ins and outs of that in Arizona our legislature this year came up with this bill and it passed both houses and was eventually signed into law. It's very simple though in that if any eviction filing is dismissed for whatever reason the case gets sealed. There's no direction on how to seal cases whether it's automatic or whatever it's just seal the case. And there's some other reasons for example if the landlord and the tenant stipulate to vacate the judgment and seal it then it becomes sealed. And some of that wording gets very specific and very tricky but overall it was a very simple law. It's less it's like three paragraphs or something that became part of our Arizona revised statutes. There's certainly provisions for the tenant and their attorneys and court folks to be able to access those records but the word is sealed and that's pretty much it. It was left up to each court system in the state to figure out how they're going to do that. Great, yeah, thank you for that context. So the upturn report that Natasha alluded to earlier specifies that a sealing regime does not need to be a binary system in which records are either completely open to the public or completely closed. And I'm wondering Natasha if you'd be able to just explain a little bit more what was meant by this in the report and then to the rest of you and specifically Scott and Britt, talk a little bit about, you touched on it but how Arizona and DC's record sealing laws think about this binary when it comes to data access. Yeah, so it basically means what you said that a record can be closed to general public access but made available by the court under limited circumstances for specific uses like as Britt and Scott were mentioning for attorneys representing clients and housing cases. A concern that gets raised when we talk about sealing eviction records at the point of filing in particular, so while a case is still moving through the court process is what happens when someone like a tenant in that case or their attorney needs access to information about the case so that they can represent themselves or their clients. One reason this comes up and a reason we talked about that it wasn't so important for us to say that sealing is not a binary is that courts in some jurisdictions do sometimes think of sealing in a binary way where they're putting a record into a sealed envelope forever that can't be opened by anyone. In reality, that's actually almost never true. Even with like sort of the strict just sealing regime you can almost always petition a court to unseal a record if you have a good enough reason. And for example, in the world of criminal records in many jurisdictions they seal certain criminal records they're not publicly available but give police wide-ranging access to sealed records which is a big problem by the way I am absolutely not advocating for giving police access to sealed records but I'm just using that as an example to show that the government can live in that gray area between open and closed records when it really wants to. But more importantly, another reason this comes up is that advocates and attorneys have historically in some cases struggled to get access to sealed records when they need them to represent clients or for other critical uses that they should be able to get access to them for. So in DC where eviction records aren't sealed until the conclusion of the case attorneys still had historically had trouble getting access and had to go to the courthouse in person to get access or the parties to the case had to go in person to get access which could be a big barrier. And so that's why the new DC law requires the court to provide those records to attorneys electronically. I'll also mention that advocates in Connecticut drafted a sealing law that eventually didn't pass but would have allowed any attorney licensed in the state to access eviction records electronically to represent clients or prospective clients. And so that can help cover like the outreach that attorneys or other advocates might do to people who have received eviction notices who may not know that or who are being evicted who may not have received a notice or may not know they've been evicted and don't know when to show up in court or what to do next. Of course, each additional access includes some risk that eviction records could end up in the hands of data brokers but these are trade-offs and needs that can be figured out in the drafting process. They shouldn't be upfront roadblocks to sealing records. Scott or Brett, if you have anything to add. Well, I was gonna say that those, I think in Arizona those things were not upfront roadblocks they were things after the drafting process after the passing process then we had to figure all of those things out which is why I love one of Upturn's points in the report was work with the courts when you're drafting this legislation. It's crucial because legislators don't know court terms and there are words that we use in court that mean specific things. And if you write that into legislation then that's what's going to happen and not what you really intended. I agree, of course. And I think that one thing that we learned in the drafting process this eviction record sealing went out first in a temporary measure. And so we saw thousands of records being sealed then we caught pieces that weren't matching up with what the legislative intent. So the portion that allowed people to seal records on motion they were supposed to be specific and things that the court was supposed to do and it was being who were drafting kind of interpretation it was looked at as where the judge could decide if it was. And so in the second iteration we had to go back and say, oh no, this is a show this is not a permissive statement or structure here in this bill. So we had to fix that and also making sure that we had eviction record attorneys that were worried that they wanted to make sure that they were gonna have access to be able to move forward in future cases. We also have tenants who would try to go to court and access their cases but because it had been sealed they can't find it on the target or they're told that they don't have a case when there's still some ongoing processes in a court case or settlement agreements. And so that was problematic. And so we wanted to make sure that people were able to access their own records and see the information about their own cases but also that their attorneys were able to do that and future attorneys. And I think part of our legislation too of course we expect everyone, all of us that are members of the bar to act in a certain way, right? That is professional and law abiding but eviction record landlords have attorneys too, right? And so we wanna make sure that even in saying that attorneys can access they have to that the court is setting up processes where that people who are asking for these records that the tenants, specific tenants that they relate to are giving the authorization for them to access these records. And so that was important to make sure that at the bottom line that we are trying to do as much as possible to protect the data of the people involved. Yeah, thank you so much for all that that's really interesting too and it reminds me Marie Claire what you were saying too you work with so many cities and states that are looking to make permanent temporary legislation and I'd be really interested to hear or to know down the line if you're seeing people sort of learn throughout that temporary legislation process and then make tweaks to their permanent legislation. But just to follow up on what you started to talk about with DC's process I know that the record ceiling law was the result of a longstanding coalition of community members and service providers and advocates and government representatives who were working to identify and lower the barriers to accessible affordable housing in DC. I believe that began well before the pandemic. So you mentioned that this was part of a package of other sort of tenant protection. So in addition to curbing excessive application fees and strengthening protection from discrimination if this legislation also obviously created a record ceiling regime. And so can you just share a little bit more both you and Natasha on the process used to develop and pass record ceiling legislation and specifically pull out any pieces that impacted the access to data question during that process. Sure, yeah, this was definitely a year-harded attempt to... Oh, Britt, I'm having a little bit of trouble hearing you. I don't know if you, every time I think you lean back it gets a little quieter. All right, can you hear me now? Yes. Thank you. So every time that you know that access to deeply affordable housing is very scarce and in the effort to minimize barriers we had a series of legislation. So this final legislation was actually a combination of a few pieces of legislation that ended up into this one bill. And so there was legislation on strictly eviction record ceiling. There was legislation on tenant protections and mentioned application fees. So part of this legislation also caps application fees at $50 and has a variety of expectations and creates rights for applicants around what they can expect during the application process. And it puts language in there around eviction rights and what landlords have to do and what tenants can expect. And so this legislation covers all of that. And I think in moving the way it did during the pandemic honestly, the pandemic was a big part of how this legislation moved. And I think we focus around the pandemic and there being a public health emergency and the shelter in place and stay at home. There are a lot of people who can't afford homes and don't have access to homes and are constantly being denied housing because of these barriers. And a lot of these barriers, eviction records being one of them that they are seeing landlords, they're having vouchers or not vouchers but it's hard for them to get access whether it's credit scores, not finding out why they're denied. But eviction records, having eviction records was a big part of it. And so the will of our council in addressing it was really, it was spurred by the fact that we were in a pandemic and people needed to be able to access housing and that we were also putting forth the request that the council create additional housing vouchers and subsidies for people having housing. And so in creating these subsidies, they needed to have a way to make sure these subsidies could be used and that the subsidies and the money that they were putting towards vouchers towards creating new housing access subsidies were actually gonna be able to be used because these barriers were minimized. Yeah, thank you so much. And then I wanted to talk a little bit, Scott. You sort of sit at a very crucial position being in the courts and sort of a distributor of eviction data to housing stakeholders across Arizona. And Maricopa County Justice Courts has been known for their efforts to make eviction records more consistent and available for research. Thanks in large part to your efforts. And I'm wondering if you can share a little bit more about how the recent record ceiling law that went into effect may impact what it is you provide to legally providers and other tenant organizers and other advocates and research organizations across the state. So we released data once a month. We have, there are a couple of ways that people can access data. We have subscribers like credit companies and things like that that buy bulk data once a month. And then I send out what I think is a comprehensive Excel sheet of evictions that have happened in the past month or at least cases that have been filed in the last month. We have struggled with number one, releasing data more often than that. But we are at a once a month release schedule. And part of that is because at the end of the month, when we pull and retrieve that data for sending out, there are thousands of cases that have not been to court yet. And so there are no outcomes, there are no judgments yet. We don't even know if the case has been dismissed by the time that report is pulled with 60 or so thousand. For the last 10, 15 years, we've had about varying between 60 and 70,000 eviction cases filed each year in Miracle County. So again, thousands of those just have had no resolution by the end of the month. So when we are talking about sealing cases, the determining factor of when we will release data is, well, when is the case sealed? How long did that case take to get through the system and be dismissed or the landlord and the tenant, again, stipulate to have it vacated, dismissed and sealed? So right now we have held off on putting out our data from October because we know that there are still all of those cases that haven't been sealed yet that are going to be sealed. And if I were to release all of that on November 1st or whatever that would have been, then that's again, thousands of cases with information out there for anybody to use and those cases that are going to be sealed a week or two weeks or maybe three weeks later. And so in my communications to subscribers and other users, I've said, I just can't in good conscience put out this data knowing that it's going to be restricted later on and I can't control what you're going to do with it. I can ask you and tell you that you have to remove these files from your records but I can't count on people doing that. Not that I don't trust all of our wonderful research colleagues but there are always bad actors or inattentive actors in every field. So we are putting a delay on that until we are comfortable that the cases from the previous month have been fully adjudicated in whatever way that's going to be. That still is not going to capture those cases where six months later, the landlord and the tenant come back to court and file that motion to vacate dismiss and seal. So we're just at a point where we're just sorting through how long is that going to take? And our record sealing law just went into effect September 24th, I think. So it's only been, it's less than two months now. So we've had less than just really one full month of data and just one week in September where we are grappling with this. Yeah, thanks so much for walking us through that process and that really teases up my next question, which is that everyone has kind of alluded to this already that the ability to have a system that protects tenants and preserves access to data heavily depends on not just the policy in place but the case management software used by county courts and the guidance and protocols that are provided to the clerks and the system administrators who are in charge of really implementing a sealing regime that is in accordance with the law and the intent of the law as well. And so, we've also heard from you Scott and just others around the country that court clerks will adhere pretty strictly to the laws on the books which really emphasizes the importance of clear guidance when it comes to eviction record sealing laws. So, I know people talked a little bit about engaging court personnel early in the drafting process but I'm wondering if there are any other lessons learned that Scott, Britt, Natasha and Marie Claire you can share from your experiences or what you're hearing from other cities and counties as to what to necessarily engage them on and kind of how to do that as well. Anybody care to go first? I could talk evictions all day long so I wanna give others a chance to weigh in. I'll just make a few observations but definitely let others speak more specifically to state and local experiences. So, one is that I think it would be a mistake if courts or others sort of came away with the assumption that they have to have some sort of particular technology or sophisticated technology to be able to do eviction record sealing. All courts can seal some records or keep records confidential at the most basic level when a landlord files an eviction case, a court can require that they use initials only or a pseudonym instead of including a tenant's full name in the filing. So, it doesn't have to be this like perfectly executed with sophisticated like court records management technology thing to be effective like good enough eviction record sealing. So, I think you can work with what you have to make it work. The second thing is having said that Tyler Technologies is a big technology vendor of records management software maybe the biggest one in courts across the country and they do provide the capability to have a public access portal where anyone can access public court records as well as the system where only authorized parties can get login credentials and access confidential records that the public can't see. So, NDC when we were talking to the court like it was one of the things we did was like do you just do some quick research on like okay what are you working with and what can we find out about its capabilities from just like there are lots of things online like the sort of brochures that court management systems put out there about explaining what they can do as well as contracts or work orders that they have with other courts that can tell you what sort of systems or capabilities they provided to other courts. So, there's a contract, I think it's in California where like Tyler Technologies had promised that they would provide a system in California that would have the capabilities under California law of sealing records automatically at the point of filing and allowing them to be unsealed at a certain point. And then I've learned a lot from watching a video from the Vermont courts website where they made a video just explaining to people how to use. They have the sort of online the public portal which is general access to the records that are public as well as the sort of privileged access login system where people can access records that are confidential but that they are allowed to access for specific purposes. So watch that video, sort of learn how it works and that can help you talk to court personnel about like here's what we understand the system you have maybe able to do is that your understanding because they may not be sure, right? There might be things that the vendor knows that court personnel are not up to date on what's possible or there may be things that they need to go and ask the vendor to implement for them that they just haven't implemented. So that kind of just basic research I think has been really helpful. I think building on that, I think the basic that research but I think also the conversations of engaging with the court personnel was really important and even getting buy-in and what we were trying to do to get that feedback to say, well, what's happening now? And like this is what we are looking for this is the capability and in DC specifically the court was also going through a process of changing out software at the time that all of this was happening. And so to figure out like where it is currently to where it's going and what the capabilities of the new system and discussing that with the court personnel who would be responsible for this I think was really important. Scott, do you wanna weigh in at all as someone who sort of sits on the courts before we move to our last question before Q&A? Let's go ahead and move to the last question we can cover more things that way. Sure. So everyone kind of alluded to this that this is eviction record ceiling is a tool and a tool, a very important tool but in a larger toolbox of eviction prevention policies and from the upturn report we understand that ceiling at the point automatic ceiling at the point of filing is the most likely to protect tenants from ending up on tenant screening companies databases or allowing this data to get into the hands of people who might abuse it but I think a lot of record ceiling regimes in place today are not automatic at the point of filing and so I was wondering if a lot of them as Scott walked us through or sealed at the conclusion of the case and I'm wondering if you all have any thoughts on complimentary policies which are necessary to protect tenants from having an eviction filing on their record. I do but I just go up so I want to give out a chance to go first. I saw you unmute Scott so we can go to you and then Natasha and then Brett or Marie Claire if you have anything to add. Well, I was going to say that yes, our filing process takes place at the end of the case and I know that people always question whether before that eviction records are searchable are they scrapable, are they usable, sellable and the answer is yes and that's a, I think an unintended loophole in the Arizona law that I've been talking to reporters about for months hoping someone will bite on that and get that story out there and I've had one little bit of interest but nothing that went anywhere to do anything about it because those cases are in Arizona and in most of course jurisdictions we post dockets online so you can go on our website and see what cases are coming up today in any one of the 26 Maricopa County Justice Courts. Well, out of 26 Justice Courts on a Monday we probably have 10 that are doing evictions. Well, how many of those are going to be sealed later on? So that information is out there. That's a tough one. We don't have a way to stop that without some kind of policy in place that says we have to do that because the practice for years has been this is what we do and that's part of a battle I think with any court system is going to be well, this is what we do and we've done it this way for years and it's a matter of changing minds and changing people's ideas of what's right and what's not right. The other battle that courts have in that is look, we're a neutral party. We're gonna do our business and it's not up to us what anyone else is going to do with our data. That's up to others. And so, it's kind of like saying if you're gonna change a court form to instead of white have the paper be yellow. Well, I don't care. Okay, if you tell us to do it with yellow we'll do it yellow. That's kind of the thing with eviction ceiling records is on one hand it's not a court system's job to protect the tenant's future. Now, I say that saying, yeah, that's best for society and we get that, but that's not our mission. Our mission is to adjudicate the cases that come to us and to follow the rules that were given by the Arizona Supreme Court and the state legislature and that's where we are with the ceiling records. Sure, we're doing it and we're not unhappy to be doing it but it sure could have been worked out better on the front end instead of having so much discretion of what judges or clerks can do and how they enter those records which determines if they get sealed or not. Which is a long answer more than y'all asked but I thought that was important to add. Yeah, so first I think in terms of immediate harm reduction now is the time for states to pass laws that restrict the kinds of information that tenant screening companies can include in their reports. Over this, Amur, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau published an interpretive rule where they affirm that states have the authority to regulate what tenant screening companies and other consumer reporting agencies include on their records, including they specifically called out eviction records as a prime example of information that states can and should be restricting. So not just as a complement to finding eviction records off of the source in the courts, also making sure that we are deeply restricting the eviction records that actually get included on tenant screening reports if not eliminating them. Also Marie Claire said something at the beginning of the event that I think is really important that sealing is one tool in the broader toolbox of shifting power to tenants. The underlying problem here is housing insecurity and injustice. We need a transformed housing system. We need to support communities that are trying to experiment with and build alternative housing models, start removing housing from the speculative anti-tenant market and make it actually available for people to live in. So I think it's really important that we got down to the weeds of like sealing but don't wanna lose the bigger picture of like as Marie Claire said, yes, this is, we need a whole picture of transforming the system and shifting power to tenants. I'll just add that, you know, in addition to the tenant screening companies, I think broader protections against the use of eviction records by landlords in the future is also necessary because I think, and partially to get the protection in place but then also to engage sort of the stakeholders in a community around the broader conversation about why eviction records really should not keep people from housing in the first place. I mean, again, I think during the pandemic we saw a lot of jurisdictions understand that there's probably limited value in using an eviction record against somebody where, you know, global pandemic impacted their ability to pay rents and taking that broader conversation and bringing it to the obstacles that tenants continue to face today in this climate of rising rents, skyrocketing rents and inflation and seeing all of the barriers that tenants face and the importance of housing security. And so I think, you know, eviction sealing eviction sealing is very critical to make sure that, you know, bad actors don't necessarily get their hands on the records but we also have to make sure that we look at the tenant screening companies who can proliferate that and undermine the overall sealing regimes that courts work very hard to get into place and then also target landlords who might over rely on it and kind of stand in the way of tenants getting safe and stable housing. And I just wanted to add, I definitely incur with exactly what Natasha and Marie Claire just said and that eviction record sealing it's a tool and it's a tool in the toolbox to expand access to housing. But there are just so many things that can be addressed from better regulation of these tenant screening companies but also addressing really how applicants and tenants get access to housing that's very scarce. And that includes looking at using things such as credit score, you know, other things that can be proxies for, you know, other forms of discrimination, racial discrimination, source of income discrimination and addressing all of those things to make sure that we are expanding housing and minimizing all of these barriers. Yeah, thank you so much. I think we'll go to, we have a little bit of time for some audience Q&A and so we have had some good questions come in and I'm just going to start with this one. Someone asked, is there model legislation out there for this? I know that that depends in part on what your goals are but I thought I would pose that to the panel. And Natasha, I know you did mention Connecticut legislation earlier that didn't pass but just an opportunity to uplift any cities, counties or states legislation that you think might be working particularly well or just plug the report again since there's some guidance in that. Yeah, I mean, one of the reasons we did it was because there isn't a sort of one model the way there has been sort of a model emerging for like there are chance housing restricting what landlords do. But there are, there's lots of good work being done sort of experimenting in different states and yeah, I think Connecticut is a good one to look at. Of course, the DC legislation has a lot of excellent things in it. Yeah, nothing else. Great. Someone asked specifically about the role that court CMS vendors have played in the implementation of these policies which we've touched on and they asked how have they hurt or hindered these policies? And I'll just add, I know that in Illinois there was a little bit of the temporary COVID ceiling law was not necessarily made permanent in part because of blowback from the court systems in being able to implement what was in the legislation. And I'm curious if you all have specific types of guidance that's important to share with court staff for judicial leadership or legislatures working on record ceiling policies? Well, I would say to court personnel working on this and the analogy I always use is there are 27 different ways to get to your Circle K or your 7-11 or your Quick Trip or whatever your convenience store is in your state. There are also 27 different ways to process an eviction case and tons of different codes depending on that CMS. And so for any court personnel is crucial to think of everything and then test it after the law has gone into effect and audit and make sure that you're doing things right, that you didn't miss, oh, we forgot that if you enter a dot after seal, then it won't do it or something like that. There are all kinds of little tiny intricacies. Yeah, I would say that our... Oh, British, I think if you, I'm having a hard time hearing you, sorry. Can you hear me now? Yes. In DC, our legislation went into effect in May, at least the parts around the record ceiling. And I think that this is going to be, seeing how it's playing out, seeing how it's working is going to be crucial for any future tweaks that may need to happen in future legislation. But I also think being as specific as you can in legislation while leaving room for court personnel to utilize their own systems and figure out what works there, I think being specific about what is intended, like there are specific provisions in the DC law saying that even sharing data for scholarly purposes or research purposes that they have to have the requests to the court, of course, but it has to go through a certain thing. You have to have a written data use agreement showing how this data is going to be used, showing procedures for data storage and how the data is going to be destroyed. All those things have to be presented in the request to the court. And so I think putting kind of a framework around what the intention is is crucial. Yeah, absolutely. I'm so glad you said that. And so I'll just add this one little thing. There is no provision in our law for anyone other than tenants and their attorneys and court personnel to get those records. I'm in sort of a, well, it's a soft battle with our attorney over sharing something as simple as the zip codes that are with those sealed eviction cases. And I'm told, no, well, I don't like that. So I'm fighting that, but I would love to have seen some kind of provision made for special cases. Yeah, thanks, Scott. It's really helpful to hear about lessons learned even two months in. So really appreciate all of that. I'm just gonna pass it over, pass it back to Julia to just close us out. Thanks so much, Savihah. And thank you so much to our excellent panel. I'll just close by noting that, so for the audience on the back end, we see the questions come in. And I've been noticing that these questions are very specific, very actual, clearly based on the questions that we're getting in. There are lots of folks in the audience who are grappling in real time with eviction ceiling legislation. So we're so glad that we were able to host something on a topic that seems pertinent. We will be sharing back out some information both of the summary of what was discussed on the panel and perhaps some answers to some of these questions that we didn't get to in the coming week. So please look out for that. Thank you again to everybody who tuned in and to our wonderful panel. Have a great afternoon.