Government
PACER
PACER is the US federal court system's online portal for accessing case filings, docket information, and legal documents from federal courts.
What is PACER?
PACER — Public Access to Court Electronic Records — has been the federal judiciary's public-facing case management portal since 1988, when it launched as a dial-up service before the web even existed. Today it provides access to case and docket information from all federal appellate, district, and bankruptcy courts across the country, covering millions of civil, criminal, and bankruptcy filings. Legal professionals, journalists, researchers, and the general public use PACER to track litigation, pull filed documents, and monitor court activity. The system charges per-page access fees — currently ten cents per page — which has been a source of controversy among open access advocates who argue that public court records should not cost money to access.
The federal courts operate PACER on infrastructure maintained by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. Each federal court's case management system is technically distinct — most use CM/ECF, the Case Management / Electronic Case Files system — but PACER provides a unified access layer across them. The NextGen CM/ECF modernisation effort has been rolling out over several years, upgrading the underlying architecture and login systems. The PACER Service Center handles billing, account management, and fee waiver applications separately from the court-level document access systems.
PACER outages affect time-sensitive legal work in ways that can have professional consequences. Attorneys who cannot access filed documents within hours of a filing may miss deadlines for responses, sanctions, or emergency motions. Legal journalists following high-profile cases lose real-time access to filings during breaking developments. Litigation support teams pulling documents for case review face delays that compress already tight project timelines. CM/ECF electronic filing outages are separately severe, because attorneys depend on the system to submit documents within court-imposed deadlines.
Outage.gg tracks PACER and CM/ECF system availability using reports from attorneys, paralegals, court reporters, and legal researchers. If PACER is down, document access is failing, or CM/ECF filing is unavailable, the live status page shows current impact from the legal community.
Common PACER Problems
Issues users most frequently report when PACER is having problems.
Login failures
Players are unable to sign in, receiving authentication errors or being stuck on loading screens.
Matchmaking problems
Unable to find or join matches, long queue times, or errors when trying to connect to game servers.
Disconnections mid-session
Getting unexpectedly kicked from active sessions, losing in-game progress or items.
In-game store & purchases
Cannot load the in-game store, complete purchases, or received items are not appearing in inventory.
Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about PACER outages and server status.
You can check the live PACER server status at outage.gg/services/pacer. The page shows real-time community-submitted outage reports, an hourly trend chart, and the current health status.
PACER can stop working for a number of reasons including scheduled maintenance windows, unexpected server failures, network infrastructure problems, or DDoS attacks. Check the live status page on Outage.gg for the latest community reports to see if others are experiencing the same issue.
Go to outage.gg/services/pacer and click the "Report an Issue" button. Your report is counted immediately and helps confirm whether a problem is widespread. Reports from multiple users trigger a status change visible to everyone watching the page.
Click the "Notify Me" bell button on the PACER status page at outage.gg/services/pacer. Create a free account and we will send you an email the moment PACER comes back online — no app download required.
Many services maintain official status pages with planned maintenance notices. Outage.gg aggregates real-time community-reported outages which often surface faster than official channels.
Related Services
Other services you might be tracking alongside PACER.
