Today Fix the Court joined 23 other good-government organizations on a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and Ranking Member Dick Durbin advocating for the swift passage of the Kennedy-Wyden Open Courts Act, a bipartisan bill that would modernize the federal courts’ records system and make access to the system free.

Currently, Americans spend more than $150 million per year to access federal filings and dockets.

What’s more, the bill responds to two major hacks in the last decade by strengthening cybersecurity protections for court records and improves on prior versions by adding user-centered requirements with stakeholders in mind, from attorneys to self-represented litigants to members of the media.

As the groups note in the letter, we once again expect pushback from the judiciary. That said, software development and deployment on this scale is not part of the branch’s expertise; otherwise, the electronic court records system would have been modernized long ago.

In the groups’ view, “[T]hat means it’s up to Congress, and not judiciary bureaucrats or IT consultants, to set the rules of the road by ensuring frequent deployments of new features and industry leading data standards and cybersecurity requirements — all with costs that are contained and deadlines that are achievable.”

The letter concludes by pointing out that without congressional leadership and oversight, there would be no guarantee that features usage fees would be eliminated. In other words, without the Open Courts Act, PACER may have a long life.

In addition to Fix the Court, the signatories are the American Governance Institute, American Society of Magazine Editors, Brechner Freedom of Information Project, Center for Democracy & Technology, Data Foundation, Demand Progress, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Freedom of the Press Foundation, Free Government Information, Free Law Project, Government Information Watch, GovTrack.us, Legal Accountability Project, National Newspaper Association, National Press Photographers Association, National Security Counselors, Project On Government Oversight, Public Knowledge, Public.Resource.Org, R Street Institute, Radio Television Digital News Association, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and Tully Center for Free Speech.