RECAP Archive mirrors PACER documents for free public access -- documents appear on CourtListener.com, which ranks well in Google for party name and case name searches.
The most reliable removal path is a federal court sealing order -- the Free Law Project will remove documents from RECAP and CourtListener when there is a valid court order to do so.
Direct removal requests are evaluated case by case -- the Free Law Project is most receptive to requests involving sensitive private data, minor children, or documents filed in error.
Google de-indexing of CourtListener URLs is often the most actionable near-term step -- removing the ranking page from Google search even when source removal is not achievable.
RECAP -- the name is a backronym for PACER spelled backwards -- was created in 2009 by the Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy and later transferred to the Free Law Project, a nonprofit dedicated to providing free public access to legal information. The project operates a browser extension that, when installed by attorneys or PACER users, automatically uploads any PACER document they retrieve to the RECAP Archive. Over time, this crowdsourced model has resulted in a substantial mirror of federal court documents covering millions of cases across every federal district and circuit court.
CourtListener.com is the Free Law Project's primary public search interface for RECAP Archive content. It is a full-featured legal research platform that allows anyone to search for federal cases by party name, case number, judge, attorney, or keyword -- for free, with no registration required. CourtListener indexes not just the docket entries (the list of filings) but the actual text of documents where available, which means that a party's name appearing in a complaint, motion, or order can be found and returned in search results. See our related guide on CourtListener court record removal for a deeper dive into CourtListener-specific strategies.
The practical relationship between RECAP and CourtListener is direct: RECAP is the document repository, CourtListener is the user-facing search engine that sits on top of it. When people and Google index content from CourtListener, they are accessing content that originally came from RECAP. This matters for removal strategy: the content exists at two levels -- in the RECAP Archive itself and in CourtListener's indexed search database. A successful removal request to the Free Law Project affects both levels. A Google de-indexing request targets only the CourtListener search URL that appears in Google results, leaving the underlying RECAP document intact.
RECAP's coverage is limited to federal court documents -- it does not include state court records. For federal cases, however, RECAP's coverage is increasingly comprehensive, particularly for district court filings from the mid-2010s onward. If you were involved in federal litigation in the last decade, there is a significant probability that documents from your case were uploaded to RECAP by one of the attorneys involved. Compare this to PACER itself, which remains the authoritative source but whose access friction limits casual searching.
The mechanism by which RECAP content reaches Google is straightforward: CourtListener.com, the search interface for RECAP Archive, is indexed by Google like any other website. CourtListener has developed significant domain authority over its years of operation -- it is widely cited by legal academics, bar associations, law school clinics, legal journalists, and litigants, and it publishes structured, content-rich legal documents that Google treats as authoritative. This domain authority means that CourtListener pages for specific cases, dockets, and party names can rank prominently in Google for name searches.
For individuals named in federal litigation, the ranking dynamic works like this: Google indexes CourtListener's case and docket pages, which contain party names prominently in case captions, filing descriptions, and throughout the text of documents. When someone searches your name in Google, CourtListener pages containing that name may rank on page one -- not because the documents were specifically optimized to rank, but because CourtListener's overall domain authority causes even individual case pages to compete effectively with other results for specific person-name searches.
The recency of RECAP content also affects rankings. Newly uploaded documents from active cases can appear in Google search results within days. For cases that concluded years ago, the CourtListener pages often continue ranking because the underlying documents remain available and the pages continue to exist without updates or competing content. An old federal case can rank on page one for a person's name indefinitely -- a static digital record of a concluded matter that continues to be encountered by anyone researching that individual.
Many people assume that federal court documents behind PACER's paywall are effectively private because most people won't pay to access them. RECAP fundamentally breaks this assumption. If your documents were uploaded to RECAP -- which happens automatically whenever an attorney with the RECAP extension retrieves them from PACER -- they are now freely available and Google-indexed through CourtListener, regardless of how obscure the underlying case.
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Yes, you can contact the Free Law Project with a removal request -- and they do evaluate these requests. The Free Law Project is not a commercial entity indifferent to individual privacy concerns; it is a nonprofit that takes its mission of providing public access to legal information seriously, but that also has adopted policies acknowledging that certain documents should not be publicly available. The question is not whether removal requests are considered but what requests are likely to succeed.
The clearest and most reliable path to removal is a court order. If the federal court where your case was filed has ordered specific documents sealed, or if you can obtain such a sealing order, the Free Law Project will comply and remove those documents from RECAP Archive and CourtListener. This is the most definitive outcome -- the documents are removed from the source and are no longer accessible through any Free Law Project platform. It also addresses the AI search problem comprehensively, which de-indexing alone does not.
For situations without a sealing order, the Free Law Project evaluates removal requests on their specific merits. The factors they have publicly stated carry weight include: whether the document contains sensitive personal information that courts typically protect (Social Security numbers, financial account numbers, medical information, home addresses); whether the case involved minor children whose identities should be protected; whether documents were filed in error and contain information that should not have been disclosed in the filing; and in some cases, whether the continued accessibility of the document serves any meaningful public interest relative to the privacy harm it causes. Standard public records from contested civil litigation between parties who are adults are generally not removed absent these specific circumstances.
The Free Law Project has published guidance on its privacy and removal policies, reflecting its effort to balance public access to court records with individual privacy interests. The organization's baseline position is that public court records should be publicly accessible -- this is the foundational principle that drives RECAP's mission. Departures from this baseline require documented justification. Understanding the specific criteria helps calibrate whether a removal request is worth pursuing and how to frame it effectively.
If a court has ordered a document sealed, the Free Law Project will honor the sealing order and remove the document from RECAP Archive and CourtListener. A copy of the sealing order should be provided with the request. The challenge in some cases is that RECAP may have obtained documents before a sealing order was entered -- in which case the Free Law Project's obligation depends on whether they received notice of the sealing order. In general, the Free Law Project has responded to sealing order notifications by removing the affected documents.
Courts have redaction requirements for certain categories of sensitive personal information -- Social Security numbers, financial account numbers, dates of birth, names of minor children, and home addresses of individuals in certain case types. If a document was uploaded to RECAP containing this information without proper redaction, a removal request based on the presence of inadequately redacted sensitive information has merit. The appropriate remedy might be redaction of the sensitive information rather than complete removal of the document, but either outcome limits the harm.
Cases involving children -- particularly in family law contexts, child protective proceedings, or juvenile matters that were inadvertently included in federal dockets -- receive additional consideration. The identities of minor children in court proceedings are protected in many contexts, and documents that reveal their names or identifying information may be removed when a specific privacy interest is identified.
For individuals for whom RECAP removal is a priority and who cannot otherwise qualify under the Free Law Project's privacy criteria, obtaining a sealing order from the originating federal court is the most complete solution. A sealing motion must overcome the federal courts' strong presumption in favor of public access to court records. The grounds most likely to succeed in a sealing motion are: the case is closed and the records contain sensitive personal information (such as trade secrets, medical records, or personal financial data) that has no continuing public interest value; the records involve sealed settlement terms or confidential business information that the parties agreed to protect; or the records identify victims of certain crimes whose identities are protected by law. An attorney experienced in federal court privacy motions is essential for this process.
The federal courts and the Free Law Project both operate under a strong presumption of public access to court records. Most removal requests that do not involve a court order, sensitive redacted information, or minor children are declined. If direct removal is not achievable, Google de-indexing of the CourtListener URL is the primary near-term alternative and should be pursued in parallel with any source-level request.
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PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) is the official federal court system for accessing federal court documents. It requires registration and charges per-page fees, limiting casual access. RECAP Archive - operated by the Free Law Project - is a mirror of PACER documents uploaded by attorneys using the RECAP browser extension. RECAP makes those documents freely searchable through CourtListener.com without registration. The practical consequence: federal court documents technically behind the PACER paywall are often accessible for free through RECAP and are indexed by Google.
The Free Law Project has a privacy and removal policy governing when it will remove documents from RECAP Archive. The clearest path is a court sealing order - if a federal court has ordered documents sealed, the Free Law Project will honor that order and remove the documents from RECAP and CourtListener. For other privacy concerns without a court order, the Free Law Project evaluates requests case by case, and is more receptive to requests involving documents with sensitive private information (Social Security numbers, financial account numbers, medical information), documents involving minor children, or documents filed in error.
Obtaining a sealing order requires filing a motion to seal in the federal court where the case was filed. The court evaluates the motion based on the specific grounds presented - courts do not seal records simply on request, and there must be a compelling reason (trade secrets, minor identities, ongoing law enforcement activities, or documents filed in error containing sensitive personal data). A sealing motion must overcome the strong presumption of public access to court records in the federal system. Once a sealing order is entered, the Free Law Project will comply and remove the documents from RECAP Archive and CourtListener.
RECAP Archive documents appear in Google search primarily through CourtListener.com, which is the Free Law Project's search interface for RECAP content. CourtListener has built significant domain authority as a legal research platform and ranks well in Google for case name and party name searches. Federal court documents available on CourtListener - including complaints, motions, briefs, and orders - can rank on page one of Google for searches of a party's name, combining CourtListener's domain authority with the name-specific content of court documents.
Yes. Google de-indexing targets the CourtListener URL hosting the RECAP document. If a de-indexing request is successful, the specific CourtListener page disappears from Google search results even though the document continues to exist on RECAP Archive. Available grounds include personal information removal (for documents containing sensitive personal data), outdated content removal (for older cases with no ongoing public interest), and RTBF requests for EU/UK residents. De-indexing the CourtListener URL is more achievable than removing the underlying document from RECAP Archive and should be pursued in parallel with any direct removal request.
Yes. RECAP Archive and CourtListener are extensively used in AI training data and are actively cited by AI search systems including ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews for federal court case information. RECAP's combination of machine-readable documents, free public access, and comprehensive federal coverage makes it a primary source for AI systems generating responses about federal litigation. De-indexing from Google does not remove content from AI systems that have already incorporated it - a court sealing order that removes content from the source is the most complete solution for both search and AI exposure.
The RECAP browser extension is installed by attorneys who use PACER to access federal court documents. When an attorney with the extension downloads a document from PACER, the extension automatically uploads a copy to CourtListener's public RECAP Archive. This happens without any notification to the parties named in the documents. If your federal court documents appear on RECAP Archive, they were most likely uploaded by an attorney - possibly even your own attorney or opposing counsel - during normal use of PACER. You can learn more about the extension at free.law/recap.
The Free Law Project's removal policy prioritizes court sealing orders as the most definitive grounds for removal. Beyond court orders, they consider requests involving sensitive personal data exposure (unredacted Social Security numbers, financial account numbers), minor children's identities, and genuinely erroneous filings. Requests citing general reputation concerns without specific legal grounds or court orders are less likely to succeed. Contact the Free Law Project through courtlistener.com for their current privacy and removal contact information.
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Related guides: Court Records Removal Guide · Sealed Records Appearing in Google · Civil & Criminal Record Removal · Court Records on Background Checks