Federal Courts · Updated 2026-05-24 · Citation-verified edition
Federal Courts in 2026: The Year the Filing System Broke and the Replacement Began
A 2025 cyberattack forced the federal judiciary to accelerate the long-delayed CM/ECF replacement. The Ninth Circuit reset the grand-jury FOIA standard. Sheria Clarke moved through committee. Antonio Pozos was nominated. PACER paid $100 million in refunds. The 2025–2026 term is producing one of the most-watched shadow dockets in Supreme Court history. Every claim below is tied to a primary source.
By Open Public Records2026-05-24~25 min read57 sources
The federal courts in 2026 sit at the intersection of three simultaneous pressures: a structural modernization of the filing system (a project that was already late, then forced forward by a 2025 cyberattack), a high-volume shadow docket at the Supreme Court (35 emergency orders related to the second Trump administration as of May 2026), and a contested judicial-confirmation pipeline (38 confirmations in 2025, fresh nominations rolling into mid-2026, several high-profile seniority transitions on the Sixth Circuit and Eastern District of Tennessee).
PACER's homepage describes the scale: "more than 1 billion documents filed at all federal courts"(PACER home). The judiciary's FY2026 Long Range Plan for IT lays out the architectural roadmap behind that volume (U.S. Courts — IT Long Range Plan FY2026). AO Director Judge Robert J. Conrad's May 2025 written statement to the U.S. House documents the operational picture from inside the administrative office (AO Director Conrad — May 2025 House statement), with parallel testimony from CREW capturing the public-accountability view (CREW Statement — June 3, 2025 SJC hearing).
The Breach
The 2025 cyberattack and the paper-and-thumb-drive aftermath
On August 6, 2025, Politico reported that the federal court filing system had been hit by what investigators were calling a "sweeping hack." The lead documented that "The identities of confidential court informants are feared compromised in a series of" intrusions across PACER and CM/ECF (Politico — August 6, 2025). The next day, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts published an unusual public statement: "Cybersecurity Measures Strengthened in Light of Attacks on Judiciary's Case Management System"(U.S. Courts — August 7, 2025).
On August 12, 2025, the New York Times reported the attribution: "Investigators have uncovered evidence that Russia is at least partly responsible for a recent hack of the computer system that manages" the federal courts' filings (New York Times — August 12, 2025). Politico's follow-up the same day documented the security-flaw history: "A sweeping hack of the federal judiciary's case filing system exploited unresolved security holes discovered five years ago" (Politico — August 12, 2025). Reuters' August 7 sweep added: "the case management system — which carries sensitive information such as sealed indictments and arrest warrants — has long been a magnet for" foreign intelligence services. MIT's Urban Cyber Defense lab cataloged it as "foreign adversaries hack federal court system for second time" (MIT Urban Cyber Defense).
The operational response inside the judiciary was unusual. Several districts temporarily reverted to paper filings of the most sensitive categories of documents — sealed indictments, cooperator agreements, certain national-security warrants — while the breach scope was assessed. The Southern District of Florida went furthest, suspending electronic filing of confidential criminal-case documents.
PACER
PACER fees in 2026: the structure, the waiver, and the $100 million refund
PACER charges $0.10 per page to retrieve federal court documents, with a per-document cap of $3.00 (equivalent to 30 pages) and a quarterly fee waiver for users who accrue $30 or less in a quarter (PACER — Pricing how it works)(PACER — Pricing FAQ). The Judiciary's FY2026 Electronic Public Access budget appendix confirms the scale: PACER processed "slightly over 61" hundred million accesses in fiscal year 2024 alone (U.S. Courts — EPA FY2026 appendix).
The single biggest PACER-fee event of the decade was the National Veterans Legal Services Program v. United States class action. The Federal Circuit held in 2020 that PACER fees could be used only to cover "expenses incurred in serving" the public, not as general revenue (Knight First Amendment Institute case page). The class-action settlement that followed required PACER "to refund $100 million in improper fees to hundreds of thousands of impacted class members", per the National Consumer Law Center's case page (National Consumer Law Center)(NVLSP — class action progress statement)(PACER Fees Class Action settlement site).
Stanford Law Review's analysis of how PACER's funding structure shapes public-access policy frames the deeper stakes: "At present, this legal framework channels public access to judicial data through the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system" (Stanford Law Review — Clopton & Huq).
NextGen CM/ECF and the replacement-of-the-replacement
The judiciary's CM/ECF system has been the federal courts' filing backbone for nearly three decades. NextGen CM/ECF — the rolling modernization — has been deployed across all federal courts, with PACER and CM/ECF accounts unified for users.
The Yale Law Journal essay by Todd Venook — Enterprise Justice: Tyler Technologies and the Privatizing Court — analyzes the dominant state-court case-management vendor that is the closest analog to what the federal-court replacement will need to compete with for talent, infrastructure, and integration partnerships (Yale Law Journal — Enterprise Justice essay)(Yale Law Journal — PDF). Tyler's Odyssey runs much of the state-court system; the federal replacement will be a parallel architecture, not a hand-off.
SCOTUS
SCOTUS in 2026: opinions, oral arguments, and the shadow docket
The Supreme Court's October Term 2025 opinions are posted in the slip-opinion index (Supreme Court — 2025 slip opinions). The 2025–2026 term opened October 5, 2025 and will run through October 3, 2026.
The "Interim Docket" / shadow docket has been the term's structural story. The Congressional Research Service's primer frames it: "In January 2026, the Court heard oral argument in another emergency matter, Trump v. Cook. Justice Kavanaugh wrote a concurrence in CASA that" articulated his approach to emergency-docket review (CRS — Interim/Shadow Docket primer LSB11391)(CRS — Shadow Docket primer LSB10637). The Brennan Center maintains an active tracker of Trump-administration shadow-docket cases — "As of May 20, 2026, the court had issued 35 emergency orders in cases related to the second Trump administration" (Brennan Center — Shadow Docket Tracker). The University of Chicago Law Review's Trump 2.0 Removal Cases & the New Shadow Docket by Eskridge captures the doctrinal stakes (UChicago Law Review — Trump 2.0 Removal Cases). The Virginia Law Review's Taming the Shadow Docket is the academic anchor (Virginia Law Review). Democracy Forward's People's Guide to the term is the public-facing summary (Democracy Forward — People's Guide SCOTUS 2025-26).
Grand-jury FOIA. In Kalbers v. DOJ, 166 F.4th 783 (9th Cir. 2026), the Ninth Circuit issued a precedential opinion on January 30, 2026 addressing the scope of Rule 6(e) grand-jury secrecy in the FOIA context (Ninth Circuit — Kalbers opinion 24-1048, PDF)(DOJ — Kalbers v. DOJ analysis). The court held that "Congress later spelled out the details of these principles through Rule 6(e), which codifies the traditional rule of grand jury secrecy," resolving "historical ambiguity concerning the scope of Rule 6(e) in favor of secrecy over disclosure in the FOIA context."
The 2026 judicial pipeline runs through several specific transitions:
Sixth Circuit Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton announced on February 20, 2026 that he would assume senior status effective October 1, 2026 — opening one of the most consequential federal-circuit seats of the year (Tennessee Bar Association — Sutton senior status).
Michael C. Martin was awaiting a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee as of May 12, 2026 for nomination to the Eastern District of Michigan (Alliance for Justice — Judicial nominees).
Federal Express Corporation v. United States, 1:26-cv-01150 (U.S. Court of International Trade) — FedEx's tariff-refund suit following the February 20, 2026 Supreme Court ruling striking down certain IEEPA tariffs (Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse — FedEx v. US).
If you're a litigant trying to read your own case file
If you have an active PACER account and the case is yours, your first $30 in quarterly fees are waived automatically (PACER — Pricing FAQ). Cross-reference with donated dockets before paying — most heavily-tracked dockets are already mirrored for free. For sealed materials in your own case, your attorney can request court order under Rule 5.2(d) waiving the protection on a case-specific basis (Cornell Law — FRCP 5.2).
If you're a researcher needing bulk access
Pending
What's coming for the rest of 2026 and into 2027
The next eighteen months will produce: the first pilot rollout of the federal CM/ECF replacement at six pathfinder courts (U.S. Courts — accelerated modernization); the Sutton and Varlan senior-status transitions taking effect in October 2026 (TBA — Sutton)(TBA — Varlan); further movement in California v. Trump, FedEx v. United States, and the other administration-litigation tracks (Lawfare tracker); and, if the political math allows, another reintroduction of the Open Courts Act in the 119th Congress (Alliance for Justice).
The structural through-line across all of these — the breach, the CM/ECF replacement, the shadow docket, the judicial-confirmation pipeline, the four litigation tracks against the administration — is that federal-court records in 2026 are simultaneously more public-interest important and more contested than they have been in a generation. The infrastructure that produces those records is being rebuilt under pressure, and the publication question — who can see what, on what timeline, at what cost — is being re-answered case-by-case and rule-by-rule.