A Spokane federal court case search runs through PACER, the nationwide online system for federal court records. The cases are filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Washington, and you can search dockets, pull filings, and read opinions from any browser once you register a free account. Most casual users pay nothing, because PACER waives all charges when a user’s bill for the quarter is $30 or less.
Which Court Handles Spokane Cases
Spokane federal cases are filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Washington (EDWA), based at the Thomas S. Foley United States Courthouse at 920 West Riverside Avenue.1Eastern District of Washington. Spokane The district covers 20 counties across the eastern half of the state, from Okanogan and Ferry in the north down to Klickitat and Walla Walla in the south, with additional courtrooms in Yakima and Richland.2Eastern District of Washington. About Us If the events in the case happened west of the Cascades (Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia), the case is in the Western District of Washington, not this one.
Bankruptcy filings sit in a separate court — see below — and appeals move up to the Ninth Circuit, which also has its own system.
Searching Case Records on PACER
PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) is the main tool. You can search by case number, party name, or attorney name, and pull up docket sheets, complaints, motions, orders, and other filings for any non-sealed case.
Start by registering an account at pacer.uscourts.gov. Registration asks for your date of birth and a tax identification number, which PACER uses only for federal debt collection if fees go unpaid.3PACER: Federal Court Records. Register for an Account If you only want to look up cases rather than file anything, choose the “Case Search Only” account type. Once you’re in, you can log into the EDWA’s CM/ECF system to view dockets and documents.
If you don’t know which court a case was filed in, use the PACER Case Locator. It searches a nationwide index that updates daily and will show every federal court where a particular party has been involved in litigation.4PACER: Federal Court Records. Find a Case That is the right starting point when you have a name but not a court.
Electronic records in the EDWA go back to April 1999 for civil cases and November 2004 for criminal cases.5Eastern District of Washington. Electronic Filing System Info Older cases are not in the online system; options for those appear further down.
What It Costs
PACER charges $0.10 per page for documents, capped at $3.00 per document (equivalent to 30 pages).6United States Courts. Electronic Public Access Fee Schedule A docket sheet counts as a single document under the cap, so even a long docket tops out at $3.00. For PDFs, actual pages count. For HTML content like docket reports, PACER calculates pages by data size, with 4,320 bytes equal to one page.
The quarterly waiver is what most searchers end up relying on. If your total charges for a calendar quarter come in at $30.00 or less, the fees are waived entirely.6United States Courts. Electronic Public Access Fee Schedule The PACER Service Center reports that about 75 percent of users stay under the threshold and pay nothing in a given quarter. Looking up a case or two will almost certainly cost you zero.
Two other ways to avoid charges: if you are a party to a case and get an electronic notice of a filing, your first look at that document is free.7PACER: Federal Court Records. PACER Pricing – How Fees Work And the public access terminals at the Foley Courthouse Clerk’s Office let you view records at no charge during business hours, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday, excluding federal holidays.1Eastern District of Washington. Spokane
Reading Judicial Opinions for Free
Written opinions from EDWA judges are free to access, outside the usual per-page charges. These are the court’s substantive explanations of its rulings, and they are what most people want when doing legal research or trying to understand how a case was decided.
Inside PACER, the “Fee-Waived Opinions and Orders” report under the Reports menu pulls them without charge. If you’d rather skip the PACER login entirely, GovInfo.gov hosts the same opinions and requires no account. EDWA opinions on GovInfo go back to January 2004.5Eastern District of Washington. Electronic Filing System Info Filter by the court name — “United States District Court Eastern District of Washington” — and search by date, topic, or keyword.
Not every case produces a written opinion. Many are resolved by settlement or by short orders that don’t lay out extended reasoning, so the fee-waived set skews toward the substantive rulings.
Bankruptcy Cases
The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Washington runs its own CM/ECF system, separate from the district court. Bankruptcy searches have to go through that portal rather than the main EDWA docket.8PACER: Federal Court Records. Washington Eastern Bankruptcy Court Your PACER login works for both, and the same fee rules apply. The PACER Case Locator also searches by debtor name across districts. For phone questions, the Bankruptcy Clerk’s Office in Spokane is at (509) 458-5300.
Appeals to the Ninth Circuit
EDWA appeals go to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which keeps its own PACER system at ecf.ca9.uscourts.gov.9PACER: Federal Court Records. U.S. Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit Briefs and appellate filings for cases filed on or after January 2, 2009 are generally available there. For high-profile matters, the Ninth Circuit sometimes posts briefs free in a “Cases of Interest” section on its website. If you cannot find what you need online, call the Ninth Circuit Clerk’s Office at (415) 355-8000 (option 3) with the appellate docket number, which looks like “24-35012.”10United States Courts for the Ninth Circuit. Finding Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Briefs
Closed Ninth Circuit case files are typically transferred to the National Archives regional facility in San Bruno, California about four to five years after a case closes.10United States Courts for the Ninth Circuit. Finding Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Briefs The Clerk’s Office can confirm whether a given file has been archived.
Older Cases Not in PACER
For EDWA cases filed before the electronic cutoffs — April 1999 civil, November 2004 criminal — the records sit on paper at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). You can visit a NARA research room and examine records at no charge, making copies with your own equipment.11eCFR. 36 CFR Part 1250 Subpart C – Fees If NARA makes the copies, fees apply under its published schedule at archives.gov/research/order/fees.html.
Remote requests go through NARA’s online ordering system or by mail. You’ll need the case number and court, which you can sometimes find through the PACER Case Locator even when the full electronic docket isn’t there. Very old Ninth Circuit records, from 1891 through the late 1960s, are indexed in the 9th Circuit Historical Records Index System.
Visiting the Courthouse
The Clerk’s Office at the Foley Courthouse is open 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday, closed on federal holidays.1Eastern District of Washington. Spokane The public access terminals there let you search and view PACER records without the per-page charge, which is the cheapest route if you need to review a lot of documents in one case.
Standard federal building security applies at the entrance: metal detector, bag screening, photo ID. Recording devices are not allowed in courtrooms, and cell phone rules vary by judge. Clerk’s Office staff can tell you where a filing is, when a hearing is set, or how to request certified copies, but they cannot give legal advice about your case.