U.S.: Court may bless refunds for online access to judicial records Tuesday, February 4, 2020

Politico

A lawsuit accusing the federal court system of treating nearly a billion dollars in online access fees like a slush fund got a favorable reception on Monday from an appeals court, where the main question that judges seemed interested in debating was how to calculate the extent to which the public was bilked.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit heard arguments on a class-action lawsuit filed in 2016 that picked up on federal judges’ claims that the user fees from the so-called PACER system were being used to broadly subsidize the courts’ information technology budget, rather than being used solely to cover costs related to making court records available online.

At issue is about $145 million in fees that users pay each year to search for and download federal court filings.

Read more at: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/03/judicial-records-pacer-refund-110597