Court codes

How DocketLayer identifies courts, and how to find the court code you need.

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:

curl https://api.docketlayer.ai/v2/status

US federal courts

Federal court codes follow PACER conventions. Examples:

Code	Court
nysd	Southern District of New York
deb	District of Delaware
cand	Northern District of California
cacd	Central District of California
ilnd	Northern District of Illinois
txsd	Southern District of Texas
nyeb	Eastern District of New York
njb	District of New Jersey Bankruptcy
ca2	US Court of Appeals, Second Circuit
ca9	US Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit
uscfc	Court of Federal Claims
cit	Court of International Trade

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:

Code	Court
nyscef	New York State Courts Electronic Filing
fl_circ	Florida Circuit Courts
ca_superior	California Superior Courts
tx_district	Texas District Courts

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

Code	Court
fct	Federal Court of Canada
fca	Federal Court of Appeal
tcc	Tax Court of Canada
bc_sc	Supreme Court of British Columbia
on_scj	Superior Court of Justice (Ontario)
qc_cs	Cour supérieure du Québec
ab_kb	Court of King’s Bench of Alberta

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:

curl -s https://api.docketlayer.ai/v2/status | jq '.courts[] | select(.name | test("Delaware"; "i")) | {code: .court_code, name: .name, coverage: .coverage}'

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.