By Nate Raymond

The U.S. federal judiciary on Friday said it will temporarily hike fees to download documents from its online court records system known as PACER in order to accelerate the development of a new, more secure case management and public access system.

The executive committee of the Judicial Conference of the U.S., the judiciary's top policymaking body, agreed to increase the cost of downloading a court filing to 12 cents per page, up from the current 10 cents, for a five-year period starting January 1.

It marked the first adjustment in PACER fees since 2012, when the per-page fee was raised from 8 cents to 10 cents, which is charged only for the first 30 pages of a filing. The hike was approved in order to address what the judiciary said was insufficient funding to cover the remaining phases of its long-in-the-works modernization project.

"Unfortunately, without a modest increase in fees, we will not be able to collect enough money to cover the costs of delivering the case management system that the federal courts must have to continue to operate securely," Judge Robert Conrad, the director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, said in a statement.

To soften the blow, the judiciary said it would waive fees for users who spend $40 or less per quarter, an increase from the current $30 waiver. It said that will ensure that the vast majority of individual users, as opposed to law firms and other heavy PACER users, can avoid paying anything.

Through the fee hike, the judiciary is aiming to raise funds to help fast-track the completion of a new, more secure electronic case management system to replace an aging system following a major hack last year.

That hacking was disclosed in July 2025 and raised concerns in part because of reports that data about confidential informants and other sealed case files may have been accessed by foreign actors, following an earlier breach in 2020.

PACER fees currently generate about $147 million annually for the judiciary. It said the modernization project's costs are estimated at $700 million to $800 million over a six-year period ending in fiscal year 2030.

Lawmakers have for years called for the judiciary to make PACER free, with legislative efforts to do so often gaining bipartisan support.

A new effort to do so was launched earlier this month when U.S. Senators John Kennedy, a Republican from Louisiana, and Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, introduced the latest version of a free PACER bill known as the Open Courts Act.

Gabe Roth, who heads the court reform group Fix the Court, in a statement denounced the fee hike as "price gouging."

"Court records are public information, so people should be able to access them online for free, especially when the actual cost of pulling up a filing is far closer to a tiny fraction of a penny per page than $0.12," he said.

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