Opinion: The federal courts are running an online scam
Every day, dozens of hungry reporters lurk inside something called PACER, the online records system for America’s federal courts. These days, they’re mostly looking for the latest scraps of intel on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian inference into the 2016 presidential election. And everyone from lawyers to researchers to activists uses the system to find similar criminal cases, track the latest arrests of terrorism suspects or argue for sentencing reform.
But I’m here to tell you that PACER—Public Access to Court Electronic Records—is a judicially approved scam. The very name is misleading: Limiting the public’s access by charging hefty fees, it has been a scam since it was launched and, barring significant structural changes, will be a scam forever.The U.S. federal court system rakes in about $145 million annually to grant access to records that, by all rights, belong to the public.
It was never supposed be this way. In 1991, Congress passed legislation to allow for “reasonable fees… for access to information [federal court records] available.” By 1998, one could get access to records by going to a terminal at a courthouse, and in 2001, PACER was launched online.
The federal courts ignored Congress. PACER, which is run by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, instead substituted a broad and convoluted reading of the congressional intent so that it could charge for access far beyond what is allowed by Congress. In the past, PACER funds have been used forAll told, some 319 million documents are available on PACER, flung across 94 district-level courts and 13 appellate courts.
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