US Courts Speed Up Plans for New Case System After Cyber Attacks

The federal judiciary is accelerating its move to a new case management system after repeated cyber attacks on the current system used for court filings.

Judge Michael Scudder of the Seventh Circuit, who chairs the federal court’s IT committee, said Tuesday the judiciary moved up the adoption of a new system by two to three years in response to attacks that took place last year. Sealed documents in espionage and other sensitive cases were targeted in a breach of the federal judiciary’s case management system last year, people familiar with the matter said at the time.

Scudder said the Judicial Conference—the judiciary’s policy-making body—was briefed Tuesday about the planned upgrade. Six district courts will start testing parts of the new system this year, according to a judiciary press release, and appellate and bankruptcy courts will adopt it later.

“That need arises out of our cyber risk, which remains persistent and complicated,” Scudder said during a press briefing after the Judicial Conference meeting. He said court officials have spent the last few months trying to find ways to get the new system in place “because we need to.”

An outside firm with cybersecurity expertise has been consulting on the project, he added.

Scudder said the courts have taken steps to protect sensitive documents from hackers while trying to build the new system. “The cyber breaches that we experienced last summer really punctuated the necessity for accelerating the project,” he said.

The judiciary has faced multiple cyber attacks in recent years. Last summer’s hack exploited vulnerabilities that were similarly breached in 2020, during an attack that also targeted the judiciary’s case management system, Bloomberg Law earlier reported.

Court officials have said for years they were looking to upgrade the case management system, as well as PACER, the public-facing system used to find and view court filings.

US District Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove, who chairs the judiciary’s committee on court administration and case management, said there are ongoing discussions on whether the judiciary could expand free access to PACER. Users currently pay 10 cents for each page accessed, and total charges of less than $30 are waived each quarter.

But he said that the courts are looking to use some of those fees to fund the implementation of the new case management system.

“I think the expectation is, even if we have a longer term aspiration to make it largely free for those who are using it, in the short term, we do see it as a source of funding and a pretty significant source in a really tough budget time period in which we’re going to need to be creative in the ways we fund this program,” said Van Tatenhove.

Habeas Handling

The meeting was held shortly after the judiciary publicly released its annual report on case statistics, which found a more than 400% jump in habeas petitions by immigrants last fiscal year as the Trump administration has heightened federal immigration enforcement.

Top federal prosecutors have told courts that their offices have been overwhelmed by the pile-up.

Chief Judge Jeffrey Sutton of the Sixth Circuit, who chairs the Judicial Conference’s executive committee, told reporters on Tuesday that the spike in habeas filings was “not a formal action item” at that morning’s meeting, but that it would be “quite a surprise” if lower court judges weren’t talking about this issue.

However, Van Tatenhove said that his committee plans to discuss at its next meeting creating guidance for the federal judges managing the surge of habeas filings facing courts. He called the increase “unprecedented in some ways” and said it has “grown exponentially.”

“There’s going to be resource questions. There’s going to be clerk’s office questions, administrative kinds of questions that we’ll get briefed on and then try to act as expeditiously as we can,” Van Tatenhove said.

Meeting Remarks

Attorney General Pam Bondi spoke at the meeting, along with members of Congress, Sutton said.

Bondi addressed the US servicemembers killed following strikes against Iran, discussed threats to the judicial system and issue of “swatting,” where false crime reports are made to the residence of a judge or other public official to draw a law enforcement response, according to a person familiar with the meeting.

Bondi also raised the issue of cybersecurity and law enforcement efforts to guard against those attacks, the person said.

Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, spoke about how President Donald Trump and administration officials have threatened judicial independence, and how officials have engaged in rhetoric that undermines the judiciary, coinciding with a rise in threats against judges, according to the person.

Sutton said at Tuesday’s press briefing that threats are a constant topic for federal judges, but that the subject wasn’t on the agenda for this week’s conference proceedings.

Durbin also encouraged Chief Justice John Roberts to consider how the high court could better handle orders on its so-called interim docket, where the justices decide whether to halt challenged actions while litigation continues, typically without much explanation, the person said.

Senate Judiciary Committee members Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), and Ted Cruz (R-Texas), along with Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, and Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House spending panel that covers the courts, also attended, according to Sutton.