“The System Is So Messed up”: Neutrality and Efficiency in an Eviction Courtroom

Abstract

Eviction research focuses primarily on what happens before or after an eviction, overlooking the importance of the courtroom in understanding how the eviction process unfolds. We offer a case study of an eviction court in Franklin County, Ohio, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using ethnographic observation and qualitative interviews, we investigate the following questions: (1) What role do courtroom actors play in eviction procedures? and (2) How have the COVID-19 pandemic and pandemic-related policy impacted courtroom processes? We highlight this court’s determination to continue business as usual, as demonstrated through allegiance to the logics of neutrality and efficiency. Although the court was able to implement small-scale changes, these changes were made in the interest of landlords, ultimately undermining the court’s supposed neutrality and enforcing a type of efficiency that favored the continued processing of cases despite warnings from public health officials.

The COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing policy changes, including eviction moratoria and rental assistance, transformed eviction courts and proceedings. Although some localities were able to curb the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic through local level policy, other localities saw increased infection and mortality after various moratoria had been lifted (Benfer et al. 2021; Fusaro, Coley, and Carey 2023; Hepburn et al. 2021; Michener 2022). Building on these findings, we present a qualitative case study of an eviction courtroom, a space that is underexplored in eviction literature (Sandefur 2008). Given the implications of various local-, state-, and national-level policy changes on the eviction process, we highlight how the lived experience of courtroom actors and tenants evolved during this time (Keene et al. 2023).

The following questions guide our work: (1) What role do courtroom actors play in eviction procedures? and (2) How have the COVID-19 pandemic and pandemic-related policy impacted courtroom processes? We employ a case study of Franklin County, Ohio, home to Columbus, the state’s capital and largest city. The city has a racial breakdown of about 60 percent White, 30 percent Black, 6 percent Asian, and 4 percent other and is among the top 100 evicting cities in the United States (Eviction Lab 2023). As Ohio abstained from a statewide moratorium during the COVID-19 pandemic, evictions continued during an already severe housing affordability crisis. ¹ Ohio’s lack of action on eviction coupled with Franklin County’s rising population and dwindling affordable housing supply make the context of our case study especially useful. Our data include 40 hours of ethnography and 14 interviews with tenants and courtroom actors, including magistrates, lawyers, property managers, and courtroom staff. Understanding tenant lived experiences in the courtroom, specifically at a time of major policy changes, clarifies how policy changes played out in the courtroom during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Eviction during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Scholars have just begun to understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on eviction procedures and outcomes, with much of this work focusing on public health outcomes (Ali and Wehby 2022; Jin et al. 2021; Keene et al. 2023; Leifheit, Linton, et al. 2021; Leifheit, Pollack, et al. 2021; Sills and Rich 2021; Sun and Bisesti 2023). For instance, residents in states with eviction moratoria experienced lower levels of mental distress during the COVID-19 pandemic (Ali and Wehby 2022; Leifheit, Linton, et al. 2021). Other research demonstrates that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) eviction moratorium reduced COVID-19 infections and mortality because it held off mass displacement and overcrowding (Benfer et al. 2021; Keene et al. 2023; Sills and Rich 2021). Some argue that the moratorium ended prematurely, noting increased infections and mortality after the moratorium’s expiration (Leifheit, Linton, et al. 2021).

Even with moratoria, tenants were still evicted for nonpayment of rent. Under the federal eviction moratorium, tenants still owed rent but were not supposed to be forcibly removed from their residence for nonpayment. However, implementation of the moratorium was largely left up to the states. Localities across the nation implemented varying policies, such as filing bans, rental assistance, and moratoria (Benfer et al. 2023; Keene et al. 2023). Many states and cities did not pass any local rental protections (Benfer et al. 2021, 2023; Keene et al. 2023; Mervosh 2020; Michener 2022), leading to higher eviction filings compared to localities with moratoria and rental protections (Treskon et al. 2021). Not only did state moratoria reduce filings rates, but they also tempered relationships between filings and risk factors such as community poverty and racial and ethnic composition (Fusaro et al. 2023; Hepburn et al. 2023). The work on eviction during the COVID-19 pandemic thus has mainly focused on macro-level trends (Benfer et al. 2023), overlooking many of the day-to-day interactions that shape eviction. Recently, Keene et al. (2023) qualitatively examined how renters experienced eviction moratoria across three states, including Ohio. Through lived experience, these authors highlight how eviction moratoria both protected renters yet often fell short. We build on these qualitative findings, focusing on renters’ lived experience and dynamics in the courtroom during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Inequality in the Courtroom

Courts, both criminal and civil, are marked by inequality and power asymmetries. Recent work has explored these dynamics in the context of criminal court, demonstrating that the legal system reproduces social advantages and disadvantages (Clair 2020; Feldmeyer and Ulmer 2011; Gonzalez Van Cleve 2016; Kohler-Hausmann 2018; Natapoff 2015; Sandefur 2008). Misdemeanors, for example, are the most common criminal justice encounters, with courts adopting a focus on efficiency to handle the sheer volume of cases (Kohler-Hausmann 2018). This approach traps disadvantaged defendants in the criminal justice system, whereas well-resourced defendants escape the process relatively unscathed (Natapoff 2015). Some scholars place the burden of these unequal outcomes on the professionals of power in the courtroom, whose legal culture is steeped in racism and classism, despite claims of the “color-blind” nature of the courtroom (Gonzalez Van Cleve 2016). There are few, if any, similar illusions for class difference, given the well-recognized and consistent resource differences extending from socioeconomic differences in the retributive justice system of the United States (Clair 2020). Others see decisions about worthiness and deservingness of defendants as linked to the intersections of race and class, especially when it comes to the attorney-client relationship (Clair 2020).

In civil courts, similar trends emerge. Scholars in this area focus on people’s experiences with civil justice events, which are often bread-and-butter issues related to housing or finances (Sandefur 2008). Given the frequency of these events, interactions with the civil courts have far-reaching consequences and contribute to the reproduction of inequality. Unequal outcomes and power asymmetries in civil courts are fueled by mechanisms that operate similarly to those in criminal courts, including the unequal distribution of resources and costs in the court system (Sandefur 2008). Just as criminal courts are burdened with massive caseloads, civil courts also experience large caseloads that exacerbate the power asymmetries already present in the courtroom; these power dynamics often result in racialized burdens for people of color (Ray, Herd, and Moynihan 2023). The civil court system, rather than attempting to achieve just outcomes, upholds the law regardless of whether it is just or not (Sandefur 2015, 2019).

In the realm of eviction court specifically, power almost always lies with the landlord or property manager because most tenants are not represented by attorneys (Desmond and Gershenson 2016; Engler 2010), and many lose their case on a default or no-show judgment (Mosier and Soble 1973; Nelson 2021; Seron et al. 2001). When tenants do show up for court, they are often “silenced” by mechanisms in the court system or are left without access to lawyers (Bezdek 1991). Thus, eviction court often functions more as a vehicle for rent collection than an avenue for “typical” legal procedural justice, perpetuating a system of racial capitalism in the courts (Brito et al. 2022; Sudeall and Pasciuti 2021). Unlike court staff, magistrates, and lawyers, who are experts in the legal language and the processes that govern eviction, tenants often expect magistrates to address their housing-related concerns, even when an eviction case is concerned only with the nonpayment of rent (Bezdek 1991). This disconnect between the way laypeople and experts interpret a case can be seen as a type of “interpretive disjuncture,” which often leads to confusion and misunderstanding on the part of the tenant (Nelson 2021).

Minimal work exists on courtroom dynamics during the COVID-19 pandemic. A recent exception is Fleming-Klink, McCabe, and Rosen’s (2023) piece on an overburdened courtroom in Washington, DC. These scholars highlight the concept of procedural hassle, in which ambiguous rules and procedures produce high opportunity costs for tenants to appear in court. Whereas tenants face high opportunity costs, such as missing work or taking a two-hour bus ride to court, landlords face much smaller opportunity costs, giving them systematic advantages in the courtroom. We corroborate this theory of systematic disadvantage in the eviction courtroom, showing its existence in a different city and its durability in times of crisis.

Data and Methods

Qualitative Fieldwork and Interviews

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, in which those experiencing the greatest housing insecurity faced the most severe consequences, Franklin County eviction court scrambled to determine how to account for the realities of the pandemic while continuing to process eviction cases. A variety of health organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association, supported the CDC’s national eviction moratorium and urged courts to implement local moratoriums to prevent the spread of COVID-19 caused by evictions (Benfer et al. 2020). Ignoring this guidance, Franklin County never stopped accepting eviction filings but paused the processing of noemergency eviction filings between March 16 and June 1, 2020. When the court was set to resume eviction filings locally, they chose to move to the Columbus Convention Center (Capps 2020; Rangel et al. 2021). By failing to implement a local moratorium, the court increased the threat of COVID-19 transmission and increased the likelihood that the evicted household would experience greater long-term health harms (Sandoval-Olascoaga, Venkataramani, and Arcaya 2021). In May 2020, right before the local pause in filings expired, eviction filings were down 78 percent compared to average (Eviction Lab 2024). Since, filings have increased steadily, with some fluctuations.

At a national level, the CARES Act, passed on March 27, 2020, instated a moratorium that ran through the end of July 2020; this moratorium applied only to federally related properties, or 28 to 46 percent of occupied rental units (McCarty and Perl 2021). On September 4, 2020, the CDC implemented an additional moratorium that was extended several times through July 31, 2021. Although the CDC eviction moratorium supposedly protected all renters who met the income edibility requirements, interpretation was open to the discretion of local courts across the nation. Thus, despite the federal moratorium on evictions, hearings and processing still took place based on state and local policies (CDC 2020). On July 23, 2021, seven days before the CDC moratorium was set to expire, the moratorium was ruled unconstitutional by an appeals court in Cincinnati (Gordon 2021). Despite attempts by the CDC to extend the moratorium, on August 5, 2021, the Franklin County Municipal Court decided to resume and process eviction filings for the nonpayment of rent (Franklin County Municipal Court 2021). At the end of June 2021, the Franklin County Municipal Court officially moved back to its offices on 375 South High Street, acting as if the COVID-19 pandemic was coming to an end. Before the move back to the courtroom, filings were still down 43 percent compared to average. They have since increased steadily to the most recent rate of 49 percent above average in July 2024 (Eviction Lab 2024).

The Franklin County Courthouse is an old building with small hallways leading into the courtrooms, which are often packed to the brim with tenants, lawyers, and staff members. When court was moved to the convention center, staff from the Legal Aid Society and other tenants’ rights organizations urged community aid organizations to physically set up in the court lobby. The increased space thus provided the opportunity for organizations to create this model; these organizations included IMPACT Community Action; the Court’s Self-Help Center, Community Mediation Services; Prevention, Retention, and Contingency; the Department of Job and Family Services; and the Legal Aid Society of Columbus. Courtroom staff and service workers dubbed the setup the “one-stop-shop model,” where clients could conveniently access various social and help services and quickly close eviction filings.

Our fieldwork took place between May 1, 2021, and August 31, 2021, including observations from both the convention center and the typical court location. We were thus able to observe the end of the eviction moratorium in addition to the location changes by the Franklin County Municipal Court, as shown in Figure 1. In Franklin County, eviction court takes place two or three days a week and lasts from about 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Given this short window of time and the infrequency of eviction court, total hours of observation amounted to 40 hours. We observed the waiting rooms and courtrooms equally, often switching back and forth between both locations. During this summer-long ethnography, we observed formal court procedures, informal conversations and proceedings in the waiting room, and interactions with social services and community organizations. Despite the limited number of ethnographic hours, these hours merited rich moments of eviction court processing. When considering the challenge of conducting qualitative research during a global pandemic and the plethora of changes that the court underwent during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the collection of these ethnographic moments constitutes an important contribution to our understanding of the eviction courtroom.

Figure 1.

Visualization of policy interventions.

Throughout fieldwork, we wrote detailed fieldnotes about the courtroom and the interactions that took place in the courtroom. We got to know courtroom staff well and regularly interacted with tenants, landlords, attorneys, and other court actors. Most times, we went into the field together yet observed different areas and rooms, which allowed for many informal data analysis sessions and conversations after observation in the field. We created our codebook based on these sessions, introducing strong intercoder reliability into our analytical method. We believe in the iterative process of qualitative data analysis, in which one moves back and forth from research questions to raw data to ensure the inductively derived codes are grounded in theoretical framing (Lareau 2021).

We also conducted 14 semi-structured interviews with tenants, magistrates, lawyers, property managers, and courtroom staff. Our recruitment and interview methods varied across respondent groups. For instance, we targeted the service organizations through the contacts we made during our ethnographic observations, aiming for at least one respondent from each organization. Because we previously secured approval from a magistrate for this project, we leveraged this contact to send out a recruitment email with information to all magistrates. To sample tenants, we approached them in the court waiting room with a short recruitment script and a contact sheet. This allowed the tenant to focus on the court proceedings at hand and to also have the freedom to say no if they were not interested. Landlords and property managers proved to be our most challenging respondent group to recruit. Although we tried a variety of methods, including email, approaching them in the courtroom, and going through our points of contact, we ultimately interviewed only one property manager. We conducted interviews at various locations, intending to provide a time and locale most comfortable for the respondent. Respondents received a $20 gift card for their participation.

Our final analytic sample consists of two magistrates, one property manager, one lawyer, five service staff, and five tenants. Given the small population of courtroom staff, including only seven magistrates, we feel that the total of two magistrates and five service staff is a representative sample of the courtroom’s overseers. Similarly, the five tenants interviewed allow for a small snapshot of the tenant experience. As previously mentioned, property managers and landlords were the most challenging group to access. We estimate that we approached a total of 15 landlords. We are not sure whether this lack of interest reflects a certain amount of shame, apathy, or something else entirely on the part of landlords in participating in the eviction process. Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic hindered our ability to recruit participants. Despite our relatively small sample size, we triangulate our findings from our interviews along with our ethnographic observation. Moreover, in assessing our sample for theoretical saturation, we point to recent work that finds that most qualitative data sets reach saturation “between 9 and 17 interviews” (Hennink and Kaiser 2022).

Conducting in-person, qualitative research during a global pandemic proved to be incredibly challenging. We see this as both a strength and a limitation of our work. Although we ensured precautions in terms of masking and social distancing, we believe that the heightened anxiety and fear impacted our respondent rates. We also note that conducting eviction research, although emotionally challenging during any given period, was particularly taxing during a pandemic. During a typical day at court or in a typical interview, we heard stories of job loss, sickness, heightened economic and housing insecurity, death, and other challenges brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Findings

Our findings explore the changes in the Franklin County eviction court at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. First, we demonstrate the importance of neutrality in the courtroom; courtroom actors see themselves as unbiased arbitrators, regardless of the visual cues of inequality that were present in the courtroom. In criminal and legal literature, neutrality is recognized as a critical component of procedural justice, often linked to the concept of legitimacy (Taggart 2022). To uphold their legitimacy, courtroom actors must present themselves as legally neutral to show the public that their decisions are made in unbiased ways (Taggart 2022). This presentation serves as a tool to obscure the fact that eviction is hardly a neutral process given that it targets certain communities at disproportionate rates. Our analyses demonstrate that many courtroom actors actively deny the inequalities that exist in the eviction process, ultimately exacerbating disparities under the guise of neutrality (Van Cleve and Mayes 2015).

Second, we highlight the emphasis on efficiency in the courtroom because getting through cases quickly and finishing the docket for the day were often more important than ensuring just outcomes. As with neutrality, the contemporary legal process values efficiency as a critical component in resolving cases (Brown 2014). Although civil and criminal courts may see efficiency as a neutral good, it presents a variety of risks because massive caseloads often exacerbate the power asymmetries already present in the courtroom (Kohler-Hausmann 2018). Our findings demonstrate that this eviction court has embraced a form of efficiency that benefits landlords, effectively undercutting their own stated goal of neutrality. Although efficiency can also serve the interests of tenants, as demonstrated with the one-stop-shop model, this model was ultimately created with the interests of courtroom actors and landlords in mind. Instead of pausing to create an eviction diversion program or extending the local-level moratorium, the Franklin County eviction court chose to uphold the duty of efficiency over tenant’s rights and well-being. Finally, we highlight the changes the Franklin County courtroom did choose to make, which provided some temporary relief for tenants but pandered to landlord interests and fell short of the long-term, structural changes needed to create meaningful differences in eviction inequalities.

Neutrality in the Courtroom

On a typical day in court, the waiting room starts to fill up just before 9:00 A.M. At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, eviction court takes place at the convention center in a gray-looking, expansive lobby with carpeted floors and makeshift gray dividers to create separate rooms for the courtroom, mediation, and social service organizations. The rest of the room is filled with socially distanced chairs for the tenants and folding tables for social service organizations. There is typically a long line of tenants trying to check in for their hearing. By 9:30 a.m., tenants have filled most of the chairs. Some pull their chairs next to each other, some sit quietly and fill out paperwork, and others try to soothe crying children or chat with other tenants about their situation. There is a mix of sounds in the waiting room: chatter from courtroom staff and service organizations about the docket for the day or what they did over the weekend, mothers with kids trying to distract them from the boring few hours ahead of them, and tenants in conversation with lawyers trying to understand settlement agreements. These conversations were typically between tenants and landlord attorneys, with tenants being relatively quiet, submissive, and confused in these interactions.

Lawyers for landlords wear suits and have slicked-back hair. Some are younger, but most of the regulars seem to be older White men, perhaps in their 50s or 60s. The legal aid lawyers have a different look. There is a handful of younger interns who wear business clothing and are tasked with the job of getting tenants to fill out initial paperwork. While the interns sit at the service table, the legal aid lawyers run in and out of the courtroom, seemingly having back-to-back obligations. There is a mix of women and men here, with a fair amount of racial diversity. There is similar age, gender, and racial diversity among other social service organization staff, with most dressed in business casual attire. Landlords and property managers tend to blend in with the service organization staff. Most are White, with some racial variability compared to the lawyers of these landlords. We also note that many property managers are White women in their 30s or 40s in business casual attire. Tenants are the easiest to spot. On a typical morning, about two-thirds of tenants in the waiting room are Black women in their 20s or 30s. There is almost always at least one single mother in the waiting room with one or more children who run around while she speaks with courtroom staff. We also note more diversity of identity: some elderly, some with visible disabilities, a handful who need translation services, a handful of immigrants and refugees. Most of the tenants are wearing street clothes: jeans, sneakers, graphic t-shirts, sweatpants, crocs, and leggings.

Despite these visual cues of power dynamics, courtroom staff express to us that their role throughout this process is to be legally neutral regardless of the outcomes that the law might produce or the biases that they might hold. One magistrate explains his role as follows: “to be that neutral arbiter, to sort of dispassionately apply the law.” Another magistrate expresses a similar sentiment: “My role is to basically enforce the law. If I can facilitate a settlement between parties, I’m going to do that, but ultimately, I’m going to enforce the law.” Although these magistrates believe neutrality to be a critical part of their role in procedural justice, this does not necessarily mean that they are neutral parties, nor does it guarantee just outcomes. In fact, many social service staff acknowledge that eviction itself is hardly a neutral process, expressing the disparities that exist across identity. For example, when asked whether certain demographics or neighborhoods have been particularly affected by eviction, one respondent laughs. When we ask him to elaborate, he responds, “mainly poor African Americans and like the bad parts of the neighborhoods.” Whereas social service staff acknowledge these disparities, magistrates and other courtroom staff uphold an illusion of neutrality that ends up benefiting landlords.

The COVID-19 pandemic provided an opportunity for increased empathy on the part of magistrates, landlords, property managers, and lawyers. For example, the COVID-19 pandemic put many people at risk of eviction who were not previously at risk, challenging common assumptions about who experiences evictions to begin with. One respondent explains as follows:

Everybody’s shifting down is what we’re seeing. Everybody’s losing income as a whole. We’re still seeing a lot of our regular clients come in, but the demographics of people that were economically insulated from being evicted before have dipped down enough that we’re starting to see a lot of them as well.

Thus, a wider swath of the public became vulnerable to eviction due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite this equalizing effect, disparities in eviction outcomes continued during the pandemic (Hepburn et al. 2023). Some courtroom actors, however, used the equalizing effect of the COVID-19 pandemic to downplay the fact that disparities in eviction procedures and outcomes remain. For example, when asked whether certain demographics or neighborhoods are disproportionately affected by evictions, one magistrate responds as follows:

I can honestly say that as far as neighborhoods go, a lot of times you look at the street, you’re like I don’t even know where that is. Yeah, I’ll be honest, in that respect, I think it just, it varies. I mean I’ve had people that are behind in their rent that are paying $1,700 a month, so you know that the place has got to be decent, right? And then you’ve got those people who are paying $325, so you know they’re living in a shoe box, right? So, I mean it hit[s] all demographics.

The denial of disparities, although useful in demonstrating the fact that eviction can and does affect many people, is simply not representative of the fact that eviction affects certain groups, such as Black single women, at disproportionate rates. These “color-blind” logics result in unequal burdens for tenants, especially those without access to legal representation (Ray et al. 2023).

Some courtroom actors challenge the idea that neutrality necessarily leads to just and even outcomes. As one service staff member explains, “the most likely group to be evicted in Columbus for several years has been Black single mothers.” He goes on to explain that although different populations are evicted, the original populations are now more likely to enter homelessness. Although state moratoria mitigated targeted disparities in eviction filings (Fusaro et al. 2023), the persistence of disparities was still obvious in the courtroom.

Just as “color-blind” logics hold that racism is a thing of the past (Alexander 2011), class logics naturalize class inequality, contributing to the myth of equality in the courtroom. For example, Bill, a lawyer for landlords, explains his understanding of the roots of eviction as based in a “capitalist system where there are rich people and there are poor people, and it’s not based on demographics.” Like Bill, Ashley, a property manager, uses the same class-based logic to naturalize this inequality and justify her participation in this system of exploitation:

I think that by eliminating the $300 unemployment, it would get people to go look for jobs, because we’re actually short staffed, and we’re hiring, all of our properties are hiring. There’s a way for people to make money and get jobs and you don’t need a degree to do it, we pay well. I think that it really comes down to work ethic. If people want to work to pay their rent or not, or if they want to sit on their butt and collect unemployment and not pay rent and eventually get evicted. It’s hard to say because I don’t want to sound heartless, I see both sides, but because we’ve been dealing with it as a company for so long, it’s just, I mean it’s frustrating.

Similar to the denial of race- or gender-based disparities, the denial of structural economic inequality creates an illusion of neutrality that often results in disproportionate burdens and outcomes for marginalized groups (Ray et al. 2023). In choosing not to address class-, race-, or gender-based inequalities, courtroom actors reproduce uneven eviction outcomes for tenants, many of whom have been historically marginalized at the intersection of these identities.

Some courtroom actors did employ alternate logics but were dissuaded from using these in the courtroom. For example, when we asked Beth, a social worker, about her office’s role in the public health and eviction crisis, she was careful about her words. She explained, “I’m editing out things that could be political. I get in trouble with my mouth. Sometimes people take offense when I start being like, here’s preventive actions [to eviction].” Although Beth wanted to push the court to embrace more local protections, she did not feel like these suggestions would be embraced by the court. Beth worried about the repercussions that these alternate logics might have on her employment. Continuing, Beth pointed out how during the COVID-19 pandemic, the court took some action to prevent the spread of COVID-19 but that it fell short, explaining that “there were people who made public health complaints frequently and . . . at one point they even came in to inspect.” During her interview, she pointed to a shower curtain barrier that allowed her office to stay open and keep her colleagues from getting COVID-19, discussing the risks that her office was taking:

Some people in the court have gotten it (COVID-19) from visitors to the court, some people have gotten it on their own. . . . Our offices had to fully quarantine two times because somebody in our office caught COVID. And then we’ve had multiple other instances where there’s been a known exposure and we’ve had to shut down for a few days. So it definitely was very risky, and we have some people and some relatives involved where there’s some really serious health complications. . . . And that’s honestly why like certain people think that our shower curtain looks tacky, but we have remained [open].

Rather than employ alternative logics and approaches, magistrates and other court actors continued to embrace business as usual in spite of the consequences, leaving dissidents like Beth fearing for their employment. Meanwhile, tenants experienced the greatest health risks; the lack of local protections increased the likelihood that the evicted household would contract COVID-19 and also make it more challenging to recover from COVID-19 hardship (Sandoval-Olascoaga et al. 2021).

Bureaucratic Efficiency in the Courtroom

Sitting in the courtroom, we await the beginning of the docket. The magistrate leans into their microphone to call a case forward, and the landlord steps forward to the bench with no tenant in sight. The magistrate goes through a well-rehearsed line of questioning, including how many months the tenant is behind on rent, how much they owe the landlord, and whether the tenant is still on the premises. It is a simple nonpayment of rent case, and given the tenant’s lack of appearance, judgment shifts in the landlord’s favor; the magistrate rules judgment for restitution. The same landlord has two cases, so the magistrate quickly moves on to the next case and goes through the same line of questioning. The magistrate recommends judgment for restitution. A new case is called. The magistrate goes through the same line of questioning. The tenant is two months behind in rent, and the magistrate recommends judgment for restitution. This is the third eviction in a row, occurring within a span of five minutes.

Societal advantages are often tipped in the landlord’s favor long before eviction court. Extractive government policies, such as neighborhood composition rules, redlining, blockbusting, restrictive covenants, and racial zoning, have historically inhibited Black mobility and economic opportunity at the advantage of landlords (Massey and Denton 1998; Rothstein 2017). Once tenants begin the eviction process, many factors continue to tilt the process in favor of landlords, one of which being the no-show of a tenant and the default judgment that typically follows. If the goal of the court is efficiency, a tenant no-show is convenient because magistrates can expedite the process (Mosier and Soble 1973; Nelson 2021; Seron et al. 2001). These default evictions occur without any attempt to locate the tenant and inform them of their rights. This lack of oversight and legal precedence ultimately causes magistrates to privilege landlords’ rights (Bezdek 1991; Brito et al. 2022; Sudeall and Pasciuti 2021). Although this is efficient for the court, which is undoubtedly burdened by the sheer number of cases, it is not in the best interest of tenants and is certainly not a neutral good. Along with quick movement through the docket, we notice frequent comments on the part of courtroom actors valuing the efficiency of the process. For example, when the docket is being completed quickly, “lawyers and magistrates discuss ‘doing well’ in terms of time . . . they smile to each other and say, ‘we are doing well so far.’” The focus is less on ensuring both parties are heard and more on efficient processing of cases (Bezdek 1991; Brito et al. 2022).

The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated this focus on efficiency, which created a large backlog of cases and recurring continuances. Courtroom staff explain that the backlog grew long during Columbus’s three-month eviction pause and the federal moratorium. Once this local eviction filing pause expired, filings spiked. Then, if a tenant sought out protection under the moratorium and rental assistance, the magistrate had to continue the case, thus adding to the backlog. The number of cases became difficult for the court to handle, especially when they were moved back to the regular courtroom because this space was significantly smaller than the convention center. To solve this issue, the court decided to limit the daily number of cases and postpone others for later dates. Given this substantial increase in cases, efficiency became even more important to courtroom actors because they had to get through these cases quickly if they were going to work through the long backlog of filings. Although a quick a speedy trial is not necessarily a bad thing, efficiency in this case presents a variety of risks because large caseloads often exacerbate the power asymmetries present in the courtroom (Kohler-Hausmann 2018). Ironically, this heavy emphasis on getting through the docket efficiently also undercuts the court’s supposed emphasis on neutrality because these backlogs often create administrative burdens that reproduce disadvantages for tenants (Ray et al. 2023).

Some service workers push back against this emphasis on efficiency in the courtroom. Brian, a social worker, tells us about when he asked a magistrate to inquire if tenants have children in the home, “something simple so that they would know whether to send the tenant to Prevention, Retention, and Contingency.” The magistrate responds simply: “That would take too much time.” Eviction is a traumatic experience associated with depression, food insecurity, lower educational outcomes, and criminal justice involvement (DeCandia, Volk, and Unick 2022; Hatch and Yun 2021; Hoke and Boen 2021; Leifheit et al. 2020). In focusing primarily on efficiency, court actors diminish the possibility of avoiding eviction, a well-known adverse childhood experience that can play a crucial role in developmental well-being (DeCandia et al. 2022).

Tenants also experience confusion about the process. When arriving at eviction court, the tenant must be prepared for an overwhelming experience. Upon arrival, security and the Self-Help Center direct them to check-in. Beyond that, there is a general lack of direction for tenants. For example, at the check-in table one day, we witness this response to basic questions about the process:

As tenants come in one by one, they ask the check-in attendants what to do. They respond, “Just wait outside and listen for your number.” The staff member asks each tenant whether the eviction is for nonpayment of rent. When they reply yes, she sends them over to IMPACT and other service organizations across the hall. One tenant expresses to the staffer that he just wants to get this over with, asking why he has to talk to the organizations across the hall. The staffer replies sternly, “If you wanna be evicted then don’t talk to anybody.” He then asks, if he does get evicted, he has 30 days to get out, doesn’t he? She replies: “No, of course not, you only have 10 days if you get evicted.”

At her response, the tenant looks confused and wanders back out to the waiting room. Although the waiting room features a self-help center for questions, the focus on efficiency inside the courtroom often ends in confusion and misunderstanding for a tenant. Tenants often lack any legal representation and appear confused by the process, which leads them to ask the magistrate for explanation. These ambiguous rules create procedural hassles for tenants, resulting in systemic disadvantages in the eviction courtroom, effectively undercutting the goal of neutrality (Fleming-Klink et al. 2023). In one instance, we note a case at the bench in which the magistrate fails to explain policy to a tenant: “The tenant is confused and says that her understanding was that they were protected under CDC guidelines from eviction until June 30. The magistrate does not explain why she isn’t [protected] and grants judgment for restitution.” When asked about the eviction moratorium, most tenants were unaware of it or misunderstood how it might assist them.

Although most cases in eviction court are uneventful, with a steady stream of default judgments, some are more emotionally charged, highlighting the intense power dynamics at play in the courtroom. One day, we observe a tenant at the bench explaining her situation to the magistrate:

The tenant conveys that she’s been trying to communicate with her landlord for so long and she just needs a little more time. “I’ve lived with roaches, I live in a bad neighborhood, people shoot through my door, I’m not even getting my deposit back, $1,750.” She explains that she needs another two weeks, and she does not want an eviction on her record, but she has another place and is fine to leave. The magistrate explains that she might be entitled to her security deposit, but right now what they’re dealing with is an eviction based on nonpayment of rent. The tenant explains that the landlord did not take the funds provided by IMPACT. The magistrate says sternly, “I need you to stop interrupting me, I’m trying to help you protect your most important concern. I listened to you, it’s your turn to listen to me. On the other side of this case the landlord has certain concerns. I’m trying to allow both of you to get what you want.” The tenant responds by sobbing and yelling, “The system is so messed up!” She storms out of the courtroom.

After the tenant storms out, the magistrate calls another case forward. No one calls her back into the room, and the magistrate does not announce a continuance. Here, tenant confusion is not addressed but instead subsumed by the need to keep the docket moving, leading to the tenant’s cynicism about the system (Keene et al. 2023). This system’s emphasis on efficiency, as such, can create unequal outcomes for those seeking just outcomes (Keene et al. 2023; Sandefur 2008). In this instance, the mechanism of efficiency also silences the tenant, resulting in a power imbalance in favor of courtroom actors (Bezdek 1991). Without the institutional knowledge of the eviction process, tenants are often the only ones with concerns or questions. Although the alliance between magistrate and landlord rights is not always intentional, it is embedded into the system and upheld by power imbalances between landlord and tenant.

In similar scenarios, tenants often want to discuss ongoing housing challenges related to communicating with landlords, poor living conditions, and refusals by landlords to upkeep their properties (Nelson 2021). The law, however, mandates that the eviction case only relates to nonpayment of rent. In some cases, we speak to tenants living in poorly kept apartments. One tenant, Tiffany, says that she “had eight and a half inches of water in our downstairs,” “had trouble with [her] shower leak[ing],” and her cabinets “couldn’t hold weight.” Demonstrably, her apartment is in disrepair, which leads her to believe she could discuss this in eviction court. However, for these concerns, she must put her rent in escrow and go to another court, further complicating the matter. Yet if Tiffany withholds her rent, “there’s nothing preventing a landlord from retaliating. There’s no legal protection until you’ve actually put your money in court,” as explained by Beth, a social worker. In these cases, legal power lies in the hands of the landlord even when their property is unfit for living.

Some court actors recognize the power imbalances that the court typically operates under that creates the focus on efficiency. Brian, a social worker, states that the eviction court is “a process that was set up to be smooth and efficient and easy for landlords. It was not designed by tenants. It’s designed to help you get your property back fast.” Comparatively, Bill, a lawyer for many landlords, claims: “I interact with judges and magistrates and the bailiffs every day. I love them, and they love me. They’re there to help administer the process in the most efficient and safe way, and so are we. We want the process to go efficiently and safely.” Bill emphasizes that the court should run efficiently without acknowledging his power in the situation to negotiate with tenants or the outcomes that his actions produce as a lawyer for landlords. Although tenants expect the system to aim for just outcomes (Sandefur 2019), the power imbalances in the legal eviction process can turn eviction court into an efficient, cutthroat rent-collection mechanism (Brito et al. 2022; Sudeall and Pasciuti 2021).

The Power of Policy, Policy Shifts, and the Leverage of Actors

Upon entering the court lobby, there is a buzz of noise, tables set up with community organizations, and generally a level of chaos. Lawyers, landlords, community organization employees, and tenants walk past one another, engaged in conversation. Many people sit silently in chairs waiting for their case to be called. This is not how a typical court lobby and courtroom looks. This is how eviction court in a pandemic takes place.

Increased funding at the federal level and ensuing changes at the local level, including the one-stop-shop model, provided an opportunity for mitigating the bureaucratic hurdles of the courtroom that result in disparate outcomes for tenants. This model involves community organizations tabling in the lobby of the courtroom to provide tenants with access to rental and legal assistance. Figure 2 visualizes this one-stop-shop model, with rectangles indicating tables and circles indicating seats.

Figure 2.

Map of the one-stop-shop model.

When asked about the one-stop-shop model, Brian, a social worker, explains, “It’s easier for us. I think it’s easier for the landlords. I think the court likes it.” One magistrate expresses the continued value of collaboration by the county eviction court: “Despite whatever anybody else might say, [the county] has a very collaborative spirit to it.” A court mediator, Stephanie, agrees, explaining that once the COVID-19 pandemic hit, “we were a little family. I was grateful that we got to build relationships with the court staff and each other as entities and that we can know where to link in the future.” Whereas the one-stop-shop model could be seen as a system designed specifically to benefit tenants, courtroom actors see it as a way to improve the efficiency of the courtroom, designed with courtroom actors in mind.

Some courtroom actors, however, do point to the benefits for tenants specifically, demonstrating that efficiency does not have to be a bad thing for tenants. For example, the centralized location of all resources allows those facing eviction to avoid the inconvenience of taking multiple days off work or multiple trips across town and other challenges related to economic insecurity. As Brandon, a legal aid lawyer and tenant attorney, explains:

I think it makes a huge difference for tenants because it means they don’t have to go around the city to take the services that they need. This is something that I’ve been wanting for a while, something that’s a little more centralized, having agencies that are more interconnected, because everything is just sort of disjointed. You’re talking about having to spend several days to get around town for what you can do here in just a couple hours. It makes a huge difference having this centralized model.

Brian, a social worker, agrees, noting that the one-stop-model mitigates “a lot of the barriers to people getting those services. You have to make appointments, you have to travel around, you’ve got kids, maybe you don’t have a car, all the things that make it so hard to be poor and get yourself out.” Again, we see an emphasis on efficiency, which, when prioritized with the interests of tenants in mind, can create a neutral good for all parties.

Along with the shift to the one-stop-shop model, the court received funds for emergency rental assistance from the CARES Act, distributed by Franklin County’s IMPACT Community Action. Courtroom staff generally express positive feelings about these funds, with only some complaints about the bureaucracy and time it took to secure these funds for tenants. Magistrate Jack explains that “the amount of assistance [IMPACT] has managed to distribute out to people in very severe need is truly staggering, and it’s probably not an exaggeration to say they’ve saved lives by keeping people in their homes during the COVID-19 pandemic.” Some tenants also laud IMPACT funds. Angela, a single mother with multiple children, explains her experience with IMPACT: “I haven’t had any issues with IMPACT. They made it super easy—you can upload all your documents, there’s a chat feature, so if you can’t get through on the phone, what I found is I have more success getting through on the chat feature.”

It is important to note here that Angela’s success with securing IMPACT funds is dependent on her access to the internet and her ability to navigate technology; other tenants may have experienced challenges in this area. Although there were some complaints on the part of landlords and tenants on the timeline for receiving aid, most express support for the continuation of rental assistance and the one-stop-shop model. Rental assistance, unlike the one-stop-shop, was created primarily with tenants’ rights in mind, targeting the structural inequalities between tenant and landlord that were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Still, a prolonged moratorium or an eviction diversion program could have done much more in terms of prevention, rather than focusing on improving the eviction process itself.

Funding for IMPACT is running out, and they will likely leave the court by the end of 2024 (King 2024a, 2024b). Community Mediation Services, which also received increased funding during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, is also running out of funds to sustain their courtroom presence. Accordingly, some courtroom actors highlighted the fact that these changes would be short-lived and questioned their overall efficacy in reducing evictions. During one interview in particular, Brandon explains his concern:

I don’t feel like a whole lot has really changed. I think [the changes are] temporary. There’s already a lot of pressure to increase the numbers. It used to be a cap of 250 cases a day, and now it’s 80 a day. I think back at the convention center it was 100 a day. I don’t have a lot of faith with the court protocols right now in adopting the changes that they had during the pandemic. I think that’s sort of been the trend that we saw, is that they tried to do their best in keeping things exactly the same, which was sort of the problem during the pandemic.

Brandon argues that these smaller-scale changes were simply a tool to keep the Franklin County courtroom functioning business as usual, in contrast to other courts that implemented longer-term or structural changes. Although the one-stop-shop model presented a unique intervention that gave tenants better access to resources, it was simply not a commensurate response to account for the increase in eviction filings after the brief pause in evictions. Although the decrease from 250 to 80 cases a day may seem like an improvement, the lower caseload was short-lived because eviction cases continued to pile up and create a backlog for the court. Attempts to mitigate and slow down evictions were thus short-lived, likely resulting in even higher burdens for tenants once caseloads are restored to normal numbers. Although pandemic-related policy, particularly the moratorium, may have temporarily equalized some courtroom experiences for tenants and courtroom actors, the changes only remained for a certain amount of time. Moreover, positive comments from tenants about pandemic-related policy were tempered with the belief that these changes would not remain in the long run. Although these policies provided some temporary relief from entrenched inequalities, some tenants expressed continued feelings of alienation in the courtroom and lack of hope for the future. As Tiffany explains:

I feel like there’s all these people in the court and there’s nobody listening to what we’re actually saying. These people are telling you that they have to scoop their own poop out of their toilet, and nobody cares, you know what I mean? . . . I really don’t understand why we’re okay with human beings being treated like this, human beings that are paying to live there.

Although tenants often expect eviction court to be a space seeking just and equal outcomes, they are disappointed to find that the courtroom has no interest in producing just outcomes. Instead, they are denied access to civil justice (Sandefur 2008) and treated as less than human, forced to endure unsafe living conditions or face housing insecurity. Although policy addressing these entrenched inequalities in the courtroom can make a difference, these policies must receive deeper investment to sustain long-term changes.

Discussion and Conclusion

This study highlights the importance of courtroom dynamics in understanding the eviction process (Fleming-Klink et al. 2023; Keene et al. 2023; Nelson 2021). Specifically, we explore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and pandemic-related policy on the eviction courtroom through a case study of an eviction court in Franklin County, Ohio. We present three findings. First, we demonstrate that courtroom actors present themselves as legally neutral (Taggart 2022). Although courtroom actors claim to uphold the duty of neutrality, their denial of targeted disparities across race, class, and gender lines ultimately exacerbates inequalities, revealing a process that is far from neutral (Van Cleve and Mayes 2015). Second, we point to the importance of efficiency in the eviction process, which was only exacerbated by the decisions that this court made during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The massive caseloads created by the lack of a local moratorium forced a kind of efficiency that benefited courtroom actors and landlords over tenants’ rights and overall health (Kohler-Hausmann 2018). Ironically, this overemphasis on efficiency undercuts courtroom actors’ goal to create a legally neutral process because neutrality was not possible when landlord rights were being prioritized over tenants’ rights.

Finally, we highlight the small-scale changes that this eviction court chose to enact during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the implementation of the one-stop-shop model and the increase in rental assistance. Scholars have examined the impact of state and federal moratoria (Fusaro et al. 2023), but local initiatives like the one-stop-shop model remain underexplored despite the influence local policies can have on eviction processes (Nelson et al. 2021). Although the one-stop-shop model and rental assistance programs represent examples of direct interventions in the civil court system, they are comparatively minor interventions when acknowledging the plethora of options the court had, including implementing a local-level moratorium or an eviction diversion program (Benfer et al. 2023; NCSHA 2022). Moreover, although the one-stop-shop model did channel some of the focus on efficiency to making the process quicker and smoother for tenants, it was ultimately created with courtroom and landlord interests in mind. That is, instead of diverting tenants from the eviction process to begin with, the court found a way to continue to process evictions during a global health crisis. By doing so, they could point to these minor changes to uphold their claim that the process is legally neutral.

Our findings reveal enduring inequalities in the eviction courtroom and provide insight into how this courtroom operated at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, our study does not come without limitations. This case study has a smaller sample size than comparable studies (Fleming-Klink et al. 2023). We also lack more tenant attorney interviews, which would have been incredibly useful in providing perspective on the limits of neutrality and the one-stop-shop model. Previous research with legal aid attorneys suggests that they can be instrumental in helping tenants contest and avoid evictions but that systematic disadvantage for tenants remains even when tenants are represented (Hanley, Howell, and Teresa 2024). Additionally, these legal aid resources are scarce, often intentionally so, and are not a substitute for a strong social safety net (Michener 2023).

One reason we experienced challenges in conducting in-person, qualitative research was that this work occurred at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Given the federal- and state-level moratoria, there was also a limited window that this case study could be completed. When factoring in the short length of hours that eviction court spanned every day, our ethnography included fewer hours than would be desired. Although the smaller data set is perhaps a limitation, we see the pandemic-specific design as a great strength of our study. We also point to recent work that finds that most qualitative data sets reach saturation “between 9 and 17 interviews” (Hennink and Kaiser 2022), with implications for qualitative saturation in ethnography as well. By presenting a snapshot of the courtroom during a time of extensive policy changes, we provide a unique look into how courtroom dynamics evolve during times of crisis.

Our findings may be specific to the structure and conditions of Franklin County, yet there are certainly parallels to other courts, both criminal and civil, across the country (Fleming-Klink et al, 2023; Gonzalez Van Cleve 2016). The nature of the COVID-19 pandemic and the wide variety of individual judicial districts’ implementations of pandemic-related changes make drawing generalizations on the national level difficult. Although some localities halted evictions for a longer period, Franklin County continued with business as usual, even as those facing the greatest levels of housing insecurity were experiencing the greatest consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ignoring guidance from a variety of health organizations, Franklin County continued evictions at the Columbus Convention Center, with the goal of continuing to process cases with some illusion of care for public health. Because eviction moratoria have been shown to reduce COVID-19 infections and mortality (Benfer et al. 2021; Sills and Rich 2021), the choice not to implement a longer moratorium statewide or locally certainly had public health implications for those most vulnerable.

Other case studies will be vital in understanding the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on eviction procedures and outcomes. Work from Keene et al. (2023) does an excellent job at highlighting the lived experiences of those directly impacted by the local-, state-, and national-level moratoria. They focus on renter experiences in three states (Connecticut, Florida, and Ohio), demonstrating how policies provided protection for a broad number of renters. Although the story they paint is fairly positive, they also note that policies did not provide complete relief given that gaps in protections resulted in both formal and informal evictions, or evictions that occur extrajudicially (Zainulbhai and Daly 2022). Because Ohio did not have any state- or local-level protections in place, these gaps in policy protections are especially impactful. We build on Keene et al.’s (2023) study by demonstrating how these policy gaps affected tenants in the courtroom and how pandemic-related policies impacted courtroom actors and courtroom processes. Although pandemic-related policy, including IMPACT funds, may have scratched the surface on addressing the inequities exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, these findings point to the need for broader, long-lasting structural changes. During our study, annual eviction filings were down approximately 20 percent compared to the average. Since then, filings in 2024 are 37 percent above the annual average, a 20-year high (Hepburn et al. 2020; King 2024a). With IMPACT and Mediation Services planning to leave the court due to lack of funds, the eviction crisis in Columbus will become even more dire unless structural changes are made (King 2024a, 2024b).

As policy changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic fade away, we must recognize the opportunity for change that the COVID-19 pandemic provided and continues to provide. In this case study, we use the COVID-19 pandemic to better understand the effect that specific historical context has on the eviction courtroom. Despite some positive changes across the country, structural inequalities in the courtroom remain durable. Although Franklin County seems to have overlooked the opportunity to challenge the durability of these structural inequalities long-term, some localities have not. Local governments have the power to make policy decisions that impact eviction procedures and outcomes greatly (Nelson et al. 2021). Although our findings highlight the durability of inequality, we believe that broader, structural changes are possible, as seen in cities like Minneapolis that strongly curbed eviction filings rates and implemented eviction diversion programs (Hepburn et al. 2023; NCSHA 2022). We believe that this study highlights the dire need for eviction prevention and diversion programs that focus on mitigating harm before the courtroom rather than “improving” a system that is already deeply unequal.