> You even have to pay reasonable fees for FOIA requests, which are also public records…

Hm? FOIA requests are usually made to request the release of data which is not yet available to the public. Most such requests require some level of human intervention, e.g. to determine what sorts of records need to be searched, to perform manual searches on non-digitized or poorly indexed data, and to perform any necessary redaction on the retrieved data.

PACER, by contrast, is already fully automated. The court records it searches are all already digitized, and have all been cleared for release; literally the only thing which users are paying for is the operation of the service.