Question: Are courts (criminal/civil/etc) bound by law to charge newspapers for printed copies of court documents? Our district court clerk says everyone–even the media–must pay a $1 per page for any material printed for us. Is there a way around this?
Answer: Copying costs are set by statute, and they are more expensive for court records than for records of other government agencies.
Section 106.0611 of the Texas Government Code outlines the fees for copies of state district courts. For non-certified copies, the courts may collect “no more than $1” for each “page or part of a page.” (Tex. Gov’t Code Sec. 106.0611(15)).
http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/SOTWDocs/GV/htm/GV.101.htm
You can ask the court to waive the fee, but you can also ask to look at the court record and take photos of the page with your phone. That’s free.
The court records fee structure is different than “government agencies” that are subject to the Public Information Act. Under that fee structure, set out in Rule 70.3 of the Administrative Code, standard copy fees are set at 10 cents per page.