Guide How to remove your record from PacerMonitor

You searched your name and a PacerMonitor page came up carrying your federal case. PacerMonitor publishes no removal form, no opt-out page and no removal policy, so there's one email address and nothing behind it obliging anyone to answer. Send it anyway, and start the court filing in the same week, because the certified court order is the only piece of this with any force behind it.

What you get

Nothing anyone has promised in writing. PacerMonitor publishes no removal policy at all, and its terms reserve a right instead of accepting a duty: "We reserve the right to remove any content for any reason at any time." A page can come down at their discretion, and that's the whole of it. Build your plan around the court order.

What you have to send

All of it, in one email. Every exact URL you want gone, the full case caption, the case number in court format, the district, and your relationship to the case as a party or as counsel with an appearance, with a certified copy of the court order sealing, restricting remote access to, vacating, dismissing with prejudice, or expunging your case attached. Certified means the clerk's stamped copy. Don't send a screenshot or a PACER printout.

What stops it working

No order. In the ordinary case the record is still validly public on PACER and no court has sealed it, so the email has nothing to point at. Expect silence, and go get the order.

Copy every URL before you write anything

Open every PacerMonitor page carrying your case, logged out, and copy the full address of each one. Send URLs, never a name. Paste them into the email as a plain list.

While you're on the page, write down the caption, court, judge, case number, filing and termination dates, the docket text and the nature of suit. Copy the case number in court format, like 3:22-cv-01230, and the district exactly as they're written on the page.

Get the certified order from the clerk

Ask the clerk in the district that has your case for a certified copy of the order sealing, restricting remote access to, vacating, dismissing with prejudice, or expunging it. Certified is the clerk's own stamped copy, not a download of the docket entry and not a photo of one.

If no such order exists yet, the next section is your step instead. An email with nothing attached is the version of this request that gets ignored.

File the motion that limits remote access

Ask the court to limit a nonparty's remote electronic access to your filing under Rule 5.2(e), which a judge can order for good cause. Rule 5.2(d) is the stronger version, and it lets the court order a filing sealed without redaction.

You file in the district that has the case, under its local rules, in front of the judge sitting on it, and the timeline is that district's motion practice rather than a support queue. Rule 5.2(h) says you waive the Rule 5.2(a) protection for your own information by filing it unredacted and not under seal, and Rule 5.2(c) reaches only Social Security and immigration cases.

Send the certified order to PacerMonitor separately once you have it, and to every other site holding the docket.

Send one email to support@pacermonitor.com

support@pacermonitor.com is the only email published anywhere on PacerMonitor's public site. Don't go hunting for a removal form or a contact page, because there isn't one.

The email carries every exact URL, the full case caption, the case number in court format, the district, and your relationship to the case as a party or as counsel with an appearance, with the certified order attached. Nothing else.

Don't email the Fitch Group, whatever the footer on your case page points at. And if anyone comes back asking for a government ID, no documented step requires one, so redact everything but your name and photo.

PacerMonitor publishes no turnaround time and no acknowledgment commitment, so treat this email as the cheap parallel step, never the plan. Send it, then keep the court filing moving in the same week.

The routes to skip

Skip the CCPA deletion demand. California's privacy law excludes anything lawfully made available from federal, state or local government records, and a federal docket is the textbook case. California's DROP deletion mechanism only binds registered data brokers, and PacerMonitor isn't a registered California data broker.

Skip FCRA. 15 U.S.C. 1681a ties a consumer reporting agency to furnishing consumer reports for credit, insurance and employment, and PacerMonitor sells litigation monitoring to law firms and financial institutions. Skip copyright too, because their terms designate no DMCA agent and offer only an informal contact.

Skip Google's removal form. Its personal information removal policy covers addresses, phone numbers, government IDs, financial accounts and medical records, and a court record isn't any of those.

Read section 21 of their terms before you threaten to sue. It compels binding AAA arbitration and waives your right to sue.

What this doesn't fix

Getting the page down does nothing to the case. It doesn't seal, expunge, vacate or alter the court's own record, and it never touches PACER.

And it only moves one URL. Every other site carrying the same docket takes its own separate request, in its own format.

If the record underneath is still open, plan on suppression rather than removal, which means ranking pages you own above the docket page.

The same docket sits on other sites

Send the PacerMonitor email yourself, it costs nothing. When the same docket is also on CourtListener, UniCourt, Trellis and Justia, Court Record Removal is $199, one time, and we inventory every copy of your case and work every aggregator we can reach so you're not sending the same email site by site.

Have us do it.

Everything above, filed for you, chased for you, and reported back. One flat fee.

See the service

Every guide we publish is free and ungated. Browse all of them, see what we do and what it costs, or read why we built this company.

Written by Drew Chapin, who ran all of this on his own name first.

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