US Federal Courts Agree To Refund Fees They Overcharged People For Access To PACER
You may recall that, back in 2016, a lawsuit was filed against the US federal judiciary and how it charges for PACER. If you don't know, PACER is the court system's electronic filing/records system, that allows users to access documents in federal court. It looks and acts like it was designed in the 1990s, and charges absolutely ridiculous amounts to use. Every page" costs $0.05, and that includes for any searches that you do (with a somewhat arbitrary definition of a page.") The problem is that the law that enables the judiciary to charge for PACER pretty clearly says that the courts can only charge reasonable fees" and can do so only to the extent necessary to fund the PACER system itself.
But that's not what happened. The judiciary turned the ridiculous PACER charges into a sort of boondoggle account to use on all sorts of other things. Some of that spending may have been useful (courts have admitted to spending it on flat screen monitors for juries, and the latest audio technology") but it's still not what the law allows, and if those things are important, they should be allocated by Congress, not by misuse of PACER fees.
In 2017, the case became a class action. In 2018, the district court ruled for the plaintiffs, saying that the court system was overcharging via PACER. As the court said:
the Court does not see how flat-screen TVs for jurors or those seated in the courtroom, which are used to display exhibits or other evidence during a court proceeding, fall within the statute as they do not provide the public with access to electronic information maintained and stored by the federal courts on its CM/ECF docketing system.
In 2020, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC) again sided with the plaintiffs and upheld the lower court's ruling.
It seems that now, two years later, and six years after the case began, the federal judiciary has finally agreed to settle the case and refund PACER fees for many users. It has put together a $125 million fund, and will refund up to $350 for fees paid for PACER between April 2010 and May of 2018, and if there are leftover funds, it will be divvied up among those who paid more than $350 during that period. That should hopefully reimburse more casual users. It won't be that big of a relief for really heavy PACER users, but it is still a big step in the right direction.
Of course, the judiciary is still charging the same basic fees for PACER. At least, for now. Congress has toyed with making PACER free to the public (which it should be, since these are public documents). Also, earlier this year, the judiciary also announced that it would... at some unknown point in the future... stop charging for searches (for some users, if they ever launch a new PACER).
The real solution, of course, is for Congress to step in and do the right thing: make PACER free for the public to use.
In the meantime, I'll probably take the $350 owed to me for my PACER use and... spend it on FOIA requests that also should be free...