Federal Court Records: PACER, CM/ECF and RECAP

State court records in Idaho run through the iCourt portal and the county clerks, as lesson 02 explains. Federal records run on a separate track with its own rules, its own fees and its own quirks. A federal drug case from a small town in Idaho, a bankruptcy by a local hospital district contractor, a civil rights suit against a county jail, a challenge to a state law: all of these sit in PACER, not iCourt. If you search only the state portal you will miss them.

This lesson covers how federal records are organized in Idaho, how to get into PACER, what it costs and how to keep that cost near zero, where the free copies are, and how bankruptcy, criminal, appellate and Supreme Court records differ. It ends with the RECAP tools, which have changed how most outside researchers use PACER.

The federal courts that hold Idaho records

Idaho is a single federal judicial district. The U.S. Courts for the District of Idaho site covers both the district court (civil and criminal cases under federal law, plus some cases between citizens of different states) and the bankruptcy court. Appeals from both go to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and from there a party may ask the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case.

The district court has four divisions. Under the court's divisional map, the Southern Division sits in Boise, the Northern Division in Coeur d'Alene, the Central Division in Moscow and the Eastern Division in Pocatello. Each county belongs to one division; the map lists them. The bankruptcy court draws its divisions somewhat differently, and puts several south central counties in an Eastern Division that sits in Pocatello and Twin Falls. Clerk's offices with public terminals are in Boise, Coeur d'Alene and Pocatello.

The District of Idaho is a small court by federal standards. The judiciary's Federal Court Management Statistics list two authorized district judgeships and 1,138 total filings in the 12 months ending June 30, 2025. Lesson 10 charts those filings over six years.

Court	System you search	Where	What you find
U.S. District Court, District of Idaho	CM/ECF through PACER	ecf.idd.uscourts.gov (through a PACER login)	Federal criminal cases, federal civil suits, civil rights cases, challenges to state laws, habeas petitions, Social Security appeals
U.S. Bankruptcy Court, District of Idaho	CM/ECF through PACER	ecf.idb.uscourts.gov (through a PACER login)	Chapter 7, 11, 12 and 13 cases, adversary proceedings, claims registers
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit	ACMS for appeals opened on or after October 1, 2023; CM/ECF for older cases	ca9.uscourts.gov	Appeals from Idaho's federal courts, opinions, memorandum dispositions, hearing video
U.S. Supreme Court	Its own docket search, free	supremecourt.gov	Petitions, briefs filed electronically, orders, opinions
All federal courts at once	PACER Case Locator	pcl.uscourts.gov	A national index of cases by party name or case number

PACER and CM/ECF: two names for one set of records

CM/ECF (Case Management/Electronic Case Files) is the system the courts and lawyers use to file papers and keep the record. PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) is the public window into CM/ECF. When you log in to PACER and open a docket in the District of Idaho, you are looking at the same CM/ECF database the clerk uses, minus anything sealed or restricted.

Federal courts went electronic earlier and more completely than most state courts. Nearly every document filed in a federal case in the past two decades is a PDF attached to a numbered docket entry. That is the good news. The catch is that the federal judiciary funds much of its public access program from user fees, so almost every page you open has a price.

Getting an account

The account you want is the PACER case search only account. Registration is free. The PACER site says that if you add a credit card when you register you get prompt access; without a card, PACER mails an activation code to your address, and you should allow 7 to 10 business days for delivery. The code cannot be emailed, faxed or given over the phone.

You do not need a filing account to read records. Filing accounts are for lawyers and for people representing themselves who have the court's permission to file electronically. The District of Idaho's ECF page notes that people representing themselves generally cannot e-file there.

PACER's announcements page shows a run of security changes in 2025 and 2026, including multifactor authentication and new password standards. Expect to set up a second login factor.

What PACER costs, as of October 2026

The fees come from the Judicial Conference's Electronic Public Access Fee Schedule, effective January 1, 2020, and are restated on PACER's pricing page.

Item	Fee as of October 2026	Cap
Document (PDF)	$0.10 per page	$3.00 per document (30 pages)
Docket sheet and other case-specific reports	$0.10 per page (an HTML page is counted as 4,320 bytes)	$3.00
Name search results	$0.10 per page of results, even when there are no matches	None
Non-case-specific reports (such as a list of cases filed)	$0.10 per page	None
Transcripts (added to PACER 90 days after they are produced)	$0.10 per page	None
Audio file of a hearing, where a court posts one	$2.40 per file	Not applicable
Court opinions	Free	Not applicable
Viewing at a courthouse public terminal	Free to view; $0.10 per page to print	Not applicable
Quarterly bill of $30 or less	Waived	Not applicable
PACER Service Center searching for you	$30 per name or item searched, plus copy charges	Not applicable

PACER's own cost FAQ gives examples: a party name search that returns two pages of matches costs $0.20, a 10-page docket report costs $1.00, a 5-page PDF costs $0.50, and a search with no matches still costs $0.10.

The quarterly waiver is the most useful number in the table. The judiciary's FY 2027 budget justification says that in fiscal year 2025, 85 percent of active PACER users paid nothing because of it. The same document reports more than 5.3 million PACER accounts, of which 12 percent were active in FY 2025, and $154.1 million in fee receipts that year. It also notes a 2022 Judicial Conference decision that searches will be free for noncommercial users once the modernized PACER interface rolls out. As of October 2026 that interface had not replaced the current one, so searches still cost the per-page fee.

The 2027 increase

On June 26, 2026, PACER announced a temporary increase approved by the Judicial Conference's Executive Committee. Starting January 1, 2027:

• Page fee: rises from 10 cents to 12 cents.
• Quarterly waiver: rises from $30 to $40. A user who spends $40 or less in a quarter should see no bill.
• Length: five years.
• Reason given: to help pay back the cost of building the new case management and public access system.

The announcement calls it the first PACER fee change in nearly 15 years; the page fee was last raised in 2012, from 8 to 10 cents. It does not say whether the $3.00 document cap changes. Check the fee schedule in January 2027 before you quote a cap to anyone.

Fee exemptions

The fee schedule lets a court exempt some users who show that an exemption is necessary to avoid unreasonable burdens and to promote public access. The list includes indigent people, bankruptcy case trustees, pro bono attorneys, pro bono alternative dispute resolution neutrals, section 501(c)(3) nonprofits and individual researchers affiliated with educational institutions. Researchers must show a scholarly project that is limited in scope and not meant for internet redistribution or commercial use.

The same schedule tells courts not to exempt government agencies, members of the media, privately paid attorneys or others who can pay. Exempt users must agree not to sell the data, may not transfer it without the court's express permission, and get the exemption for a definite period and a limited purpose. Each court decides its own requests, so a District of Idaho exemption covers District of Idaho records only.

Finding a federal case

The PACER Case Locator

The PACER Case Locator (PCL) is a national index of district, bankruptcy and appellate cases. It offers a case search, a party search, advanced versions of each with region and date limits, and a bankruptcy search. The PCL page says subsets of data are sent from the courts each night and newly filed cases usually appear within 24 hours, so a case filed this morning may not be in the index yet; the court's own PACER site is current.

The PCL is the right first stop when you do not know where a case was filed. Corporations sue and get sued all over the country. A company with an Idaho plant might be in a Delaware bankruptcy or a Texas patent case. A party search across all courts will find it.

Use party searches with care. A common surname with no other filters can return many pages of results, and every page costs 10 cents with no cap. Add a court type, a region, a date range or a nature of suit to keep the result list short.

Federal case numbers

A federal district court case number usually looks like 1:24-cv-00123-ABC. The first digit is the office or division code used inside that court, then the two-digit year filed, then the case type (cv for civil, cr for criminal, mc for miscellaneous, mj for magistrate judge matters such as some warrants and complaints), then the sequence number, and often the initials of the assigned judge. Bankruptcy numbers look like 24-40123, sometimes with a judge suffix, and adversary proceedings inside a bankruptcy carry their own numbers. Lesson 04 walks through a federal docket sheet line by line in Reading a Docket.

Different courts can use the same number. Case 1:24-cv-00123 exists in dozens of districts. Always pair the number with the court.

Free federal records

Several routes cost nothing. Use them before you spend a cent.

• Written opinions. Under the E-Government Act of 2002, federal courts make written opinions free. The District of Idaho's Written Decisions page says you reach them through the CM/ECF Decision Report under the Reports menu after logging in to PACER. You still need an account, but opening a document the court has designated as a written opinion does not add to your bill. GovInfo also publishes a collection of federal court opinions.
• Public terminals. The District of Idaho's case information page says the clerk's offices in Boise, Coeur d'Alene and Pocatello have public terminals for viewing dockets free. Printing costs $0.10 a page from the lobby computer, or $0.50 a page if the clerk makes the copies. Credit and debit cards are not accepted at the clerk's office.
• The RECAP Archive. Covered below. If someone with RECAP installed has bought a document, it is free on CourtListener.
• The Supreme Court docket. The Court's electronic filing page says documents submitted electronically are posted on its public docket free of charge.
• Party copies. Lawyers and parties who get an electronic notice of a filing receive one free look at the document. The District of Idaho's ECF page says that free look expires after 15 days. That is useful to know when a party offers to share a filing; it does not help an outsider directly.
• The bankruptcy court's phone line and feed. The District of Idaho lists a Voice Case Information System for limited bankruptcy case information at 866-222-8029, and the bankruptcy court publishes an RSS feed of the last 24 hours of selected docket events (answers, appeals, court entries, motions and orders), updated hourly. The court says no restricted or sealed information is included.

Older federal records

The District of Idaho's case information page says documents in cases filed before December 1, 2003 and closed for more than a year are not available in PACER. For those, write or visit the clerk's office. Files more than 20 years old may have been sent to the National Archives and Records Administration facility in Seattle, and retrieving them costs money. The page asks mail requests to give the party name and case number, list the documents, give your name and daytime phone number if you are not a party, and include a self-addressed stamped envelope. Mailed copies cost $0.50 a page; certified copies carry a separate fee listed in the court's fee schedule.

Bankruptcy records

Bankruptcy files are among the most detailed public records about money that exist. A debtor lists everything owned, everything owed and to whom, monthly income and expenses, recent transfers and lawsuits, all under penalty of perjury. That is why they matter for accountability: a contractor that took public money, a nonprofit that collapsed, a developer whose project stalled, a local business owner who is also on the city council.

Under 11 U.S.C. 107(a), papers filed in a bankruptcy case and the docket are public records open to examination at reasonable times without charge. The free part means at the clerk's office; PACER fees still apply online. Section 107(b) requires the court, on request, to protect trade secrets and confidential commercial information, and lets it protect people from scandalous or defamatory matter. Section 107(c) lets the court protect an individual's identifying information when disclosure would create an undue risk of identity theft or other unlawful injury.

Federal Rule of Bankruptcy Procedure 9037(a) requires filers, unless the court orders otherwise, to show only:

• the last four digits of a Social Security or taxpayer identification number,
• the year of a person's birth,
• a minor's initials, and
• the last four digits of a financial account number.

The duty falls on the person filing, not the clerk. Mistakes happen. If you find an unredacted Social Security number in a bankruptcy filing, do not copy it, publish it or pass it on. Tell the clerk's office so the court can restrict the document. The parallel civil and criminal rules, Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 5.2 and Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 49.1, are covered in lesson 07.

The documents in a bankruptcy file

Bankruptcy uses numbered official forms, which makes files predictable.

Form	What it is	What it tells you
B 101	Voluntary Petition for Individuals	Chapter chosen, names used in the past eight years, rough asset and debt ranges
B 201	Voluntary Petition for Non-Individuals	Same for companies, partnerships and other entities, plus the nature of the business
B 106A/B (or 206A/B)	Schedule A/B: Property	Real estate, vehicles, bank accounts, business interests
B 106C	Schedule C: Property claimed as exempt	What the individual debtor wants to keep under exemption laws
B 106D (or 206D)	Schedule D: Secured creditors	Mortgages, liens, car loans, equipment financing
B 106E/F (or 206E/F)	Schedule E/F: Unsecured creditors	Taxes owed (priority claims), suppliers, credit cards, judgments
B 106G (or 206G)	Schedule G: Contracts and leases	Ongoing contracts, including government contracts
B 106H (or 206H)	Schedule H: Codebtors	Who else is on the hook
B 106I and 106J	Schedules I and J: Income and expenses	Monthly budget of an individual debtor
B 107	Statement of Financial Affairs (individuals)	Recent payments to insiders, transfers, lawsuits, closed accounts
B 122A-1	Chapter 7 Statement of Current Monthly Income	The means test for individual Chapter 7 cases
309A to 309I	Notice of chapter case and meeting of creditors	Date and method of the 341 meeting and claim deadlines

Two more parts of a bankruptcy file deserve attention. The claims register lists every proof of claim creditors filed, with amounts, which can differ sharply from what the debtor listed. And adversary proceedings are lawsuits inside the bankruptcy, often a trustee suing to recover money paid to insiders before the filing. They have their own dockets and often contain the most revealing facts.

The 341 meeting

The U.S. Trustee Program explains that the meeting of creditors under section 341 of the Bankruptcy Code is run by a trustee and is not a court hearing; for Chapter 7, 12 and 13 cases the U.S. Trustee appoints a private case trustee. Almost all 341 meetings are now held by Zoom. The meeting notice (one of the 309 forms) in the case file gives the date and the connection details. Whether the public may join, and whether recording is allowed, is set by the trustee's instructions; read the notice and the U.S. Trustee's local meeting page before you plan to listen in.

Federal criminal records

Federal criminal cases in Idaho include drug trafficking, firearms offenses, fraud against federal programs, crimes on federal land and in Indian country, child exploitation cases and immigration offenses. The docket shows the charging document (a complaint, an information or a grand jury indictment), the initial appearance, detention orders, the arraignment, the plea agreement, the change of plea hearing, and the judgment.

Federal criminal dockets also have gaps that state dockets rarely show. Some entries read only "SEALED DOCUMENT" or skip numbers entirely. Search warrant applications usually sit in a separate magistrate judge (mj) case that may stay sealed until charges are filed or longer. Plea agreements and sentencing memoranda may be filed with sealed supplements. The presentence report is not filed publicly at all. A docket that jumps from entry 41 to entry 43 is telling you entry 42 exists and you cannot see it.

The Federal Court Management Statistics show 305 criminal felony defendants filed in the District of Idaho in the 12 months ending June 30, 2025 (counting defendants, not cases). Every one of those defendants is presumed innocent until a plea or verdict, and federal plea rates are high, so watch the docket for the change of plea hearing rather than waiting for a trial that may never come. The wording rules for arrests, charges and convictions in lesson 10 apply to federal cases just as they do to state ones.

The Ninth Circuit

The Ninth Circuit hears appeals from Idaho's federal courts along with the rest of the western states. Its ECF notice says that as of October 1, 2023 the court processes all new appeals and petitions in its new Appellate Case Management System (ACMS). Cases opened before that date in CM/ECF continue there unless the court directs otherwise. For a public researcher that means older appeals are found through the court's CM/ECF and PACER, and newer ones through ACMS, which the court's home page links alongside PACER.

The Ninth Circuit posts published opinions and unpublished memorandum dispositions free on its website as soon as they are filed, searchable by case name or number, panel judge, case origin and case type. It streams video and audio of its court sessions and keeps a video archive of past hearings, searchable by case name or number, hearing location and panel judge. Briefs and motions are on the docket, which runs on PACER fees. Lesson 09 covers how to read the opinions and when a memorandum may be cited.

The U.S. Supreme Court

The Supreme Court runs its own docket outside PACER. The docket search takes a docket number, a case name or other words on the docket, and covers cases filed since the beginning of the 2001 Term. Docket numbers use the form term year and number, such as 21-471 or 22-5301; numbers in the 5000 range and above are typically petitions filed without paying the fee. Applications carry an A, such as 26A123. Each docket page has an envelope icon that signs you up for email notice of new filings or actions in a pending case. Documents filed electronically are free.

For older cases, the Court notes that its engrossed dockets from 1791 to 1995 were scanned by the National Archives and are available through the archives catalog.

RECAP and CourtListener

RECAP is a free browser extension from Free Law Project, a nonprofit, that has been working on PACER since 2009. It does two things. When you buy a document or docket in PACER, RECAP sends a copy to the RECAP Archive on CourtListener. And when you browse a PACER docket, RECAP shows you which documents are already in the archive, so you can read them free instead of paying.

Free Law Project says the archive holds tens of millions of PACER documents, including every free opinion in PACER, and is regularly copied to the Internet Archive. The extension works in Chrome, Edge, Safari and Firefox, and Free Law Project describes it as private by design: it talks only to PACER and CourtListener and does not track users. Lawyers who receive PACER notices can also forward them to an @recap.email address so filings flow into the archive.

CourtListener adds alerts. Docket alerts email you when a case gets new filings; search alerts send new matches for a saved query; citation alerts tell you when a decision is cited. Alerts depend on new information reaching CourtListener, so a quiet case in a court nobody is buying from may update slowly. Its Pray and Pay project lets you request a specific PACER document so another user may buy it into the archive: regular users may place 5 requests a day and members 15. Free Law Project reports more than 30,000 requests fulfilled so far.

What RECAP does not do

• It holds only what someone bought. An obscure Idaho case may have a docket in the archive that is months out of date, with no documents.
• It is built around district and bankruptcy courts. Appellate coverage is thinner, and the Supreme Court is outside PACER entirely.
• It does not get around sealing. A sealed document cannot be bought, so it cannot be uploaded.
• An archived docket is a snapshot. Before you report a case's status, confirm it on the live PACER docket or the court's own page.
• It is not the official record. If a document matters to a legal filing or a published claim, cite the court and docket entry, and get a certified copy from the clerk when certification matters.

Questions and answers

Is it legal to share PACER documents I paid for?

Court filings that are not sealed are public records, and RECAP exists to share them. The limits come from fee exemptions: someone who got documents free under a court's exemption agreed not to sell or transfer them without the court's permission. If you paid the regular fee, those exemption conditions do not apply to you. Personal data in a filing is a different question, an ethical one covered in lesson 10.

Why does a docket show an entry I cannot open?

It may be sealed, restricted to the parties, or a text-only entry with no document attached (common for minute entries and scheduling orders). Hover over the entry or read its text: "TEXT ONLY" or "Docket Text ORDER" means the words on the docket are the whole order.

Can the PACER Service Center search for me?

Yes, for a fee: $30 per name or item searched, plus copy charges. For most people, the PACER Case Locator or a phone call to the clerk's office is a cheaper route.

Do I need PACER to read a District of Idaho opinion?

You need a PACER account to use the court's Decision Report, but opinions are free. Many Idaho federal opinions also appear in CourtListener's case law collection and on GovInfo.

Hard questions

Should public court records cost money at all?

The judiciary's answer is that Congress lets it charge fees to fund public access, and the waiver means most users pay nothing. Critics, including researchers and Free Law Project, argue that a fee on public records discourages the very oversight open courts are supposed to allow. In 2022 the Judicial Conference agreed that searches will be free for noncommercial users once the new PACER interface launches, and in 2026 it approved a five-year increase to pay for the new system. Both facts are real. Readers can decide whether the trade is fair.

Is it fair to the people in bankruptcy files to make them so easy to read?

Congress made bankruptcy papers public in 11 U.S.C. 107 because creditors and the public have a stake in how debts are discharged, and it added protections for identity and trade secrets. That a record is public does not make every detail newsworthy. A story about a contractor that took public money is one thing; a story that lists a private family's medical debts is another.