Screen grab from PACER.

The federal judiciary misused millions of dollars in fees derived from an electronic public web portal for court documents to fund certain programs that federal law did not allow, a Washington judge ruled on Saturday.

U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle said the United States is liable for certain improper expenses that violated the E-Government Act of 2002. The ruling came in a class action that alleged the judiciary's administrative office set fees too high for the online portal Public Access to Court Electronic Records, commonly known as PACER.

The suit, filed by the National Veterans Legal Services Program, the National Consumer Law Center and Alliance for Justice, seeks monetary relief for allegedly excessive fees charged between 2010 and 2016. The courts collected more than $920 million in PACER fees in that time span, according to court filings in the case.

The judiciary was not permitted to use PACER fees to pay for, among other things, courtroom technology expenses, web-based juror services and victim notification, Huvelle concluded. The federal courts in 2008 spent $24.7 million on courtroom technology, court records show.

Huvelle turned down the challengers' argument that PACER fees must be restricted solely to the marginal cost of running PACER itself, and she dismissed the government's position that the judiciary has latitude to spend PACER fees on broad programs that might benefit some members of the public but not all.

“The court rejects the parties' polar opposite views of the statute, and finds the defendant liable for certain costs that post-date the passage of the E-Government Act, even though these expenses involve dissemination of information via the Internet,” Huvelle wrote.

Jon Taylor, a partner at Washington's Gupta Wessler who argued on March 23 for the challengers, said in a tweet Saturday:

Huvelle certified a class of “individuals and entities who have paid fees for the use of PACER between April 21, 2010, and April 21, 2016.” News reporters routinely use PACER to access new court filings. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and a group of media organizations filed an amicus brief supporting the challengers.

Taylor called Huvelle's decision “a major moment in the fight for enhancing public access to court records, and will help redeem the promise of the E-Government Government Act of 2002, which Congress passed to reduce PACER fees and make electronic court records freely available to the greatest extent possible.” He added: “The decision should provide enormous benefits to litigants, nonprofit advocacy groups, journalists, scholars, and everyone else who has been forced to pay unlawfully high fees for accessing public records.”

The judiciary's courtroom technology expenses include information-technology equipment; digital audio recording equipment; and video equipment.

Huvelle questioned the nexus between PACER fees and courtroom technology. At most, she said, fees for public access to court records might be used to help pay for audio equipment “that allows digital audio recordings to be made during court proceedings and then made part of the electronic docket accessible through PACER.”

Huvelle continued: “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.”

The judge set a hearing for April 18 to discuss the next steps in the case.

“The court urges the parties to confer prior to the next status conference to determine for the years 2010 to 2016 the amount of courtroom technology expenditures that cannot be paid with PACER fees,” Huvelle wrote in her ruling.

Huvelle's ruling is posted below:

 

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