Kant v. United States
- Vince Chhabria
- 3:21-cv-05827
- U.S. District Court · Northern District of California
- 2
In Kant v. United States, Judge Tse denied Paula Jean Kant’s motion to waive PACER fees because she could access her case filings free and had not shown need.
Paula Jean Kant, whose request for free PACER access was denied.
What happened
In Kant v. United States, Paula Jean Kant asked the court for free access to PACER, the electronic service that provides public access to federal court documents. She had already been allowed to start her case without paying filing fees and had been designated an electronic filer.
The court gave three reasons for denying the request. Kant could download documents filed in her own case without charge. PACER fees were modest, and the court said she should be able to pay them when reviewing filings in cases in which she was not a litigant. The court also found that she had not shown why she needed unrestricted free access to PACER.
The court denied Kant’s motion for a PACER fee waiver. Judge Alex G. Tse explained that the magistrate judge could issue this nondispositive order even though Kant had declined to consent to magistrate-judge jurisdiction.
The detailed version
- Kant v. United States · No. 3:21-cv-05827
- Vince Chhabria
- Dec. 7, 2021
Background
Paula Jean Kant was permitted to begin her case without paying filing fees and was designated as an electronic filer. She asked the court to provide free access to PACER, the electronic public-access system for federal court documents.
Reasons for the Decision
The court denied the motion for three stated reasons:
- Because Kant was an electronic filer, she could download orders, motions, and other documents filed in her own case without charge. The court therefore concluded that she did not need PACER to follow activity in her case.
- The court stated that PACER charges $0.10 per page, up to $3.00 per document, and described those fees as modest. It said the fees support the development and maintenance of PACER’s public-access services. Although the court acknowledged Kant’s resource constraints, it stated that she should be able to pay the fees when reviewing filings in cases in which she was not a litigant.
- Relying on reasoning from a prior case, the court concluded that Kant had not shown why she needed free access to PACER and would not give her unrestricted access to documents in thousands of federal cases.
Disposition
The court denied Kant’s motion for a PACER fee waiver. The order also explained that Kant’s decision not to consent to magistrate-judge jurisdiction did not prevent Judge Alex G. Tse from issuing this order because it was not dispositive of her claims. The order cited the statute governing magistrate judges’ authority over nondispositive matters and a Ninth Circuit decision concerning that authority.
Read the full 2-page opinion on CourtListener, the free public archive maintained by the Free Law Project.