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DocketLayer uses short court codes to identify courts. Pass the appropriate code in the court_code field of your API requests. The authoritative, real-time coverage list is always available free of charge:

US federal courts

Federal court codes follow PACER conventions. Examples: All 94 district courts, 94 bankruptcy courts, and all 13 circuit courts of appeals are covered. The full list is in /v2/status. PACER code exceptions — some courts use a DocketLayer code that differs from their native PACER subdomain. The authoritative mapping is in /v2/status under each court’s court_code and notes fields.

US state courts

State court codes are short, lowercase, alphanumeric identifiers. All 50 states are covered. Examples: Note on Texas: All 37 Texas state courts carry coverage: "planned" status pending commercial access approval from the Texas Office of Court Administration. They appear in /v2/status but return 422 on docket queries until the agreement is in place. The full list of state court codes is in /v2/status.

Canadian courts

All 3 Canadian federal courts and 22 provincial/territorial superior courts are covered. The full list is in /v2/status.

Finding a court code

Before querying, confirm the court you need is covered and note its exact code:
A court with "coverage": "full" is fully supported. A court with "coverage": "partial" is reachable but may have known gaps. Querying a court with "coverage": "planned" returns 422.

Case ID format

Each court’s expected case ID format is documented in /v2/status under case_id_format.pattern and case_id_format.example. See the case ID format guide for the US federal format convention.