PACER redaction policies

For those who don't know what PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) is, first of all, it is "an electronic public access service that allows users to obtain case and docket information from Federal appellate, district and bankruptcy courts, and the U.S. Party/Case Index via the Internet." It's a service of the United States Judiciary; the PACER Service Center being run by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts.

CM/ECF is the federal courts' case management and electronic case files system, an intricate part of PACER, providing courts with enhanced and updated docket management, and allowing them to maintain case documents in electronic form. It also gives each court the option of permitting case documents - pleadings, motions, petitions – to be filed electronically with the court over the Internet.

CM/ECF in bankruptcy courts began in early 2001. For the district courts the "roll out" began nationally in May 2002, and in 2005 for the federal appellate courts . Over 35 million cases are now on CM/ECF systems, with more than 450,000 attorneys and others have filed documents over the Internet.

Federal Rules of Appellate, Bankruptcy, Civil, and Criminal Procedure implementing the E-Government Act of 2002 became effective on December 1, 2007, amending Appellate Rule 25, Bankruptcy Rule 9037, Civil Rule 5.2, and Criminal Rule 49.1 to require that personal identification information, such as social security numbers & taxpayer identification numbers, the names of minor children, financial account numbers, dates of birth, and, in criminal cases, home addresses of parties and other particulars, be redacted from documents being filed with the courts.

The Judicial Conference's policy on privacy and public access to electronic case files has developed incrementally over the years, evolving to the point where it now provides for remote access to all electronic civil, bankruptcy, criminal, and appellate case files along with the appropriate privacy safeguards. The Conference continues to review that policy periodically and, in March 2008, the approved streamlining it to eliminate provisions that are duplicative of the Rules of Practice and Procedure. (Here)

The Federal Courts are now taking a number of new steps to ensure that privacy protections afforded under federal rules are followed and are reminding those filing electronically of the their obligation under the law to redact personal identifier information with a message that includes links to relevant rules. An example of the revised login screen was included in PACER's October newsletter. At login to CM/ECF, a message reminds attorneys of their responsibility to redact this private information from the documents they file; the most recent version of this reminder also requires attorneys acknowledge that they have read the notice and complied with the redaction rules. Filers cannot complete the login process without checking the acknowledgement in this recent version.

The latest CM/ECF versions also include a number of other notable changes, including being able to choose whether the client code field should be mandatory when logging into CM/ECF. (See Here)

A new "Court Information" utility is also now available, providing general court information such as hours of operation, court location and phone number, as well as filing information such as the maximum size of PDF files, the court's version of CM/ECF, case flag definitions and more.