Court e-filing PDF/A requirements, in one index
Four jurisdictions where we have read the actual rule, technical guide or rejection table — and what each one asks for. Every entry names the controlling document. Check the court's current version before relying on it; local rules change.
What each court actually requires
| Jurisdiction | Controlling document | PDF/A requirement | The mechanics that get filings rejected |
|---|
Florida
MyFLCourtAccess | Florida Courts PDF/A FAQ, published through the portal | PDF/A-2a preferred; PDF/A-2b accepted for scanned documents | Encryption prohibited, letter page size, fonts must be embedded, and scrubbing metadata can break the declaration |
Illinois
Courts of Review | Electronic Filing Rejection Standards, effective 1 Sept 2024 | No single named flavour — enforced through a rejection table mapped to rule authority | Illegible or incomplete documents, missing bookmarks where required, file-mechanics failures listed against rule numbers |
New York AD1
Appellate Division, First Dept. | Formatting Specifications and Guidelines for Electronically Filed Documents | PDFs shall be certified PDF/A compliant | Bookmark structure specified in detail, 100 MB limit, non-compliant documents may be returned and re-filed |
Ninth Circuit
CA9 | Circuit Rule 25-5(d) + Technical Guide to Working with PDF Documents (2020) | Text-searchable PDF mandatory; PDF/A is not the headline requirement | PDF must come from the original word-processing file; scanning discouraged, images need OCR |
Why the court matters more than the checker
The same file can pass one court's rules and fail another's: Florida wants a named flavour, New York wants a certified one plus a bookmark tree, the Ninth Circuit mostly cares that the text is selectable. "Is this PDF/A?" is the start of the question, not the end of it.
What to do with the file: run the mechanical checks, then read each failure against the court's own list. The checker reports what is mechanically wrong — fonts, encryption, transparency, XMP, attachments — and the table above tells you which of those the court actually enforces.
The four failures that recur across jurisdictions
- Fonts not embedded. The most common failure, and the one courts document most often.
- Encryption or permissions. Prohibited outright in Florida; rejected elsewhere because it blocks archiving and text extraction.
- The declaration without conformance. XMP says PDF/A, the file does not validate — typically produced by "print to PDF" drivers or scanner software.
- Structure the court specifies beyond PDF/A. Bookmarks (NY AD1), text searchability (CA9), page size (Florida).
Detail pages
Check a filing against these rules
FAQ
Do all US courts require PDF/A for e-filing?
No. Some mandate it explicitly (Florida; New York's Appellate Division, First Department), some publish rejection standards that include PDF mechanics (Illinois Courts of Review), and some mainly require a text-searchable PDF generated from the original word-processing file (Ninth Circuit).
What is the difference between PDF/A-2a and PDF/A-2b?
The 'a' level requires tagged, accessible structure; the 'b' level requires only visual reproducibility. Florida's guidance prefers PDF/A-2a for born-digital filings and accepts PDF/A-2b for scanned documents.
Can a PDF be rejected even though it claims to be PDF/A?
Yes. A PDF/A declaration in the XMP metadata does not guarantee conformance — unembedded fonts, encryption, transparency or a missing output intent still fail validation. That mismatch is one of the most common rejection causes.