S. 4667 — Open Courts Act of 2026

This section establishes a centralized electronic system, operated by the Director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, that consolidates dockets, filings, orders, opinions, and audio recordings from most federal courts. The system provides automatic public access upon filing, search and bulk download functions, application programming interfaces, permanent URLs, machine-readable neutral citations, and automatic user notifications of new records.

This section increases fees for non-government high-volume users of court electronic records, requiring additional charges for those accruing $25,000 or more per quarter or using bulk-access functions, with all such fees deposited to the Judiciary Information Technology Fund. It replaces the prior fee structure with an annual fee on federal agencies equal to their preceding-year PACER fees, adjusted for inflation, to offset costs of the modernized system and other public access programs; authorizes graduated filing fees if revenues fall short, with exemptions for filers with adjusted gross income below $250,000 (adjusted for inflation) and waivers in the interest of justice; caps unobligated fund balances at $50 million with excess transferred to the Treasury; and prohibits fees for access to the new system.

This section requires the system established under the Act to comply with digital accessibility standards under section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and with section 3559 of title 44, United States Code, as if the system were operated by an executive branch agency.

This section requires the Comptroller General to notify Congress quarterly, beginning one year after enactment, whether the Director of the Administrative Office of United States Courts has produced additional usable functionality for the system and allowed attendance at all sprint reviews. It also requires the Comptroller General to audit the system every two years, beginning two years after enactment, on vendor compliance, code quality, and user needs, and to brief Congress on results and recommendations through the date 10 years after the date specified in section 2(f).

This section requires the Director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts to ensure cybersecurity for the system described in section 2, applying the same executive branch laws, policies, and standards that would govern an executive agency system, including section 225(b)(1)(D) of the Federal Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2015, and consulting with relevant executive agencies. It authorizes waivers of those requirements when implementation is infeasible or would expose confidential judicial information, provided the Director implements alternative risk mitigations and submits annual notifications and certifications to the congressional committees identified in section 205(g)(2) of the E-Government Act of 2002. It prohibits any construction that would require the judicial branch to grant the executive branch privileged access to judicial information systems.

This section requires electronic files and docket information for closed federal court cases to remain available online until the later of 15 years after the case closes or the date the files transfer to the National Archives. It also requires all written opinions issued after the date of enactment to stay available online unless redacted by court order.

This section authorizes the Administrator of General Services to provide administrative and technical support services or information technology products and platforms to the Administrative Office of the United States Courts on a reimbursable basis upon request.

This section authorizes the use of electronic addresses for notices in bankruptcy cases under title 11. It requires that any address provided for receiving such notices be an electronic address.

This section preserves existing filing fees and procedures for prisoners, the requirements of section 1915 of title 28, United States Code, public access to judicial records, and restrictions on disclosure of information that is lawfully sealed or otherwise restricted by Federal law.