In the spirit of the E-Government Act of 2002, modifications have
been made to the District Court CM/ECF system to provide PACER
customers with access to written opinions free of charge. The
modifications also allow PACER customers to search for written
opinions using a new report that is free of charge. Written
opinions have been defined by the Judicial Conference as
"any document issued by a judge or judges of the court sitting
in that capacity, that sets forth a reasoned explanation for a
court's decision." The responsibility for determining
which documents meet this definition rests with the authoring judge.
This functionality will only be available in courts that have
installed District Court CM/ECF version 2.4 or higher, and will
only provide free access to opinions filed after the court is
actively using version 2.4. There may still be a charge to access
opinions that pre-date the court's use of version 2.4. The new
report is available under the Reports menu. PACER customers can
also access opinions via existing reports and queries, such as
the docket report, and will not be billed for accessing the written
opinion document itself, but will be billed for the report or query
used to identify the document. For example, if a PACER customer
runs a docket report, the customer will be charged for the docket
report. If the customer then clicks on the document number hyperlink
for a written opinion document, the customer will not be charged
for viewing the document. Future versions of Bankruptcy CM/ECF
will have similar functionality.
If you have any questions, please contact the PACER Service Center at
pacer@psc.uscourts.gov.