To find out if someone has a restraining order, search the civil court records in the county where the order was most likely filed, and ask your local police or sheriff’s office to check the person’s name against the FBI’s Protection Order File. Between those two steps you’ll catch almost every active order in the country. The rest of this guide walks through each option, what it costs, and where the gaps are.
Start With County and State Court Records
Protective orders are issued by state courts, so the records live in state and county court systems rather than any single national database available to the public. Your first stop is the court in the county where the person lives, where a potential protected party lives, or where a relevant incident occurred.
Many state court systems now offer free online search portals. To get useful results you’ll want the person’s full legal name; a date of birth or case number helps narrow things down, especially for common names. Some portals let you filter by case type, so you can look specifically for civil protective orders rather than scrolling through unrelated cases.
Not every state has a strong online system. Some still require an in-person visit to the courthouse or a written request to the clerk of court. Even states with online access may not include every case type in their digital databases, and older cases or certain sealed matters might only exist in paper files. A temporary order that expired years ago may not appear in every database, while an active permanent order almost certainly will.
If you only need to confirm that an order exists, most online portals and in-person searches let you view basic case information at no cost. Certified copies of orders cost extra, generally somewhere between a few dollars and about $40 depending on the jurisdiction.
Ask Local Law Enforcement to Check the NCIC
Local police departments and sheriff’s offices can confirm whether someone has an active restraining order anywhere in the country. Law enforcement has access to the National Crime Information Center, a federal database maintained by the FBI that includes a dedicated Protection Order File containing court orders issued to prevent domestic violence, stalking, harassment, and other threatening behavior.
This file is the closest thing to a national restraining order registry, and it’s restricted to criminal justice agencies. You cannot search it yourself. When you ask local law enforcement to check, they query this database along with their own records, which is the most comprehensive single check available.
To request a check, contact your local police department’s non-emergency line or visit the station in person. Some departments will confirm the existence of an active order freely; others may ask you to explain why you need the information before sharing details. Policies on what officers will disclose vary by department. If you believe someone may be violating an order that protects you, law enforcement will generally be more forthcoming.
Don’t Assume the Order Is in Their Current State
Protective orders don’t stop at state lines. Under 18 U.S.C. ยง 2265, any protection order issued by a state, tribal, or territorial court must be given full faith and credit by every other state and enforced by its courts and law enforcement. The order doesn’t have to be registered or filed in the new state to be enforceable.
For your search, that means the person you’re researching may have an active order from a state they no longer live in. A county court search where they currently live could come up empty while the order remains in force. The NCIC Protection Order File is the best tool for catching interstate orders, because law enforcement agencies nationwide can query it regardless of where the order originated. If you’re relying on court records alone, think about every state the person has lived in, every state where a potential protected party lives, and any state where a relevant incident occurred, and search each one.
Federal Court Records Through PACER
Restraining orders are overwhelmingly a state court matter. In rare situations involving federal crimes like stalking across state lines, a federal court may issue a protective order. To check federal court records, use the Public Access to Court Electronic Records system, known as PACER.
Registration is free. The system charges ten cents per page for documents you view, with the fee waived if your charges stay below a quarterly threshold. You can search by party name across all federal courts using the PACER Case Locator. Federal courts redact sensitive identifiers from filed documents, including Social Security numbers, dates of birth, and home addresses in criminal cases.
What Background Check Services Will and Won’t Show
Commercial background check companies aggregate court records and may include restraining orders in their reports. They can be useful for casting a wide net across multiple jurisdictions at once, but they have real limits.
Restraining orders are civil matters, not criminal records. A standard criminal background check, the kind most employers run, typically won’t reveal them. More thorough checks that include civil court records are more likely to surface an order, but coverage depends entirely on which courts and databases the company searches. No private service has access to the NCIC Protection Order File.
Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, consumer reporting agencies must follow reasonable procedures to ensure the information they report is as accurate as possible, and they’re prohibited from including records that have been expunged, sealed, or otherwise restricted from public access. Civil records, including restraining orders, generally cannot be reported if they’re more than seven years old. Active orders within that window should appear, but expired or vacated orders may not, and delays between a court filing and a database update can create gaps.
A background check service might catch an order that a single-county court search would miss, but it’s not a substitute for a direct court records search or a law enforcement inquiry when you need certainty.
What You Won’t Be Able to See
Restraining orders are generally public records, but courts routinely redact or restrict certain details. The existence of the order and the names of both parties are almost always accessible. Specific addresses, workplace locations, and detailed allegations may be removed from the public version of the file.
Forty-four states operate address confidentiality programs, primarily for domestic violence survivors. Participants receive a substitute address they can use in place of their home address on court filings and other public records. If the protected party is enrolled in one of these programs, the public record will show the substitute address rather than where they actually live.
Cases involving minors face the heaviest restrictions. Juvenile case files are confidential in most states, and courts issue specific redaction orders before allowing any access. If a protective order was filed on behalf of a child, the case file may be partially or entirely sealed. Judges sometimes seal adult cases as well when circumstances are particularly sensitive, when sexual assault allegations are involved, or when public access could endanger someone’s safety.
One reassurance about the process itself: court record searches are not two-way. When you look someone up in a court’s online database or request records from a clerk, the person you’re searching for is not notified. From the subject’s perspective, public record searches are anonymous.