To those in the know, my PACER account was disabled. But we’re in business now and I looked to see if there were any updates on the antitrust lawsuit against the National Court Reporters Association.
Not really.
Here is a PDF of all the filings in the case as of about 6:00 a.m. this morning.
To those that don’t understand lawsuits, basically they start with pleadings, usually a complaint and an answer. Sometimes before an answer is filed, a motion to dismiss is made. That’s where we are now. An amended complaint was filed in April 2025. A motion to dismiss was filed by the National Court Reporters Association (defendant) in June 2025. A brief in opposition to the motion was filed by the plaintiffs in July 2025. A reply was filed by the defendant on August 11, 2025. There have been no filings since, presumably waiting for the motion to be decided.
In full disclosure, I have not had time to digest the documents I am about to share to give an accurate picture where we’re at legally. I do know that federal pleading standards were tightened via the Twombly or Iqbal cases years back, so it’s not as easy to make it past the pleading stage as it once was. If the case survives the motion to dismiss, in all likelihood, the National Court Reporters Association will be forced to either settle or answer the complaint and proceed to discovery where the facts of the case come out.
Before I share these documents, I would just like to note this is not or does not seem to be incredibly uncommon in our federal judiciary. I have seen cases in the past where people die before they see justice because of situations like this, where it’s almost a year since the last filing in the case and the court just hasn’t made a decision yet. The benefit for the court of people dying before they see justice is, of course, that they never have to bother with deciding the actual case. Not alleging that this is intentional, but it is a consequence of the way our system is set up, and anyone that cannot acknowledge that has perhaps not considered the math of cramming like 250,000 cases a year more or less through 900 judges and their referees, staff, etc., with some of those judges taking a disproportionate number of the cases. Even if everything was split evenly, we’re talking about a situation where a judge could research and write one opinion every business day, all day, for eternity, and still never actually get to every case. Perhaps knowing that it is astonishing that things are working as well as they are.
The amended complaint:
The amended complaint with redlining:
The motion to dismiss by the defendant, the National Court Reporters Association:
Attached to that brief was a proposed order to dismiss the case, which I choose not to waste server space on.
The plaintiffs’ reply to the motion to dismiss:
Defendant’s reply to plaintiffs’ opposition:
Honorable mention, one of the plaintiff attorneys died during the case and therefore had to withdraw from the filing system. Rest in peace Mr. Lindsey Taylor.
Good luck, litigants and litigators. Have a wonderful day.
P.S.
PACER case search revealed only four federal lawsuits against the National Court Reporters Association, with the most recent one prior to this being over two decades ago.
Isn’t it interesting that all these multimillion dollar business operations hide everything behind their paywalls and we rely on either thousands of people paying $15 to the federal government to inform themselves like I did or some jackass with a website to post the information for free also like I did?
Actually, this is a really powerful case study in human psychology. It is completely public information that stenographers pay a nonprofit $3 million a year to lie to them and make them feel like everything will be okay. And we are not dumb people. We’re just people.
How many humans in history do you think figured that shit out and decided “I’m gonna go work in the association management business?”
Addendum July 2026:
I have actually read that the averages for deciding a motion to dismiss are shorter than a year. My deepest apologies to all the judges on all the cases where the timeline is much tighter. Unfortunately it would appear absent further information that I fell into one of those psychological pitfalls I often write of and educate on.
Thanks for great update and fantastic analysis!
From what little I’ve read, I will say it seems like it could go either way. I suppose either you buy into the argument that these products are one product or you look at what I thought was the plain way to look at it, which is that you can easily separate out the cost of the cert from the membership, and simply lack the political will to do so.
So I suppose I will have to apologize to all involved if it turns out my understanding of the law was erroneous in the end. I would never have acted if I did not think it was solid.
Of course, having not read the cases in the table of authorities, my knowledge is lacking here, my gut could be wrong.