The federal judiciary misused millions of dollars in fees derived from an electronic public web portal for court documents to fund certain programs that federal law did not allow, a Washington judge ruled on Saturday.

U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle said the United States is liable for certain improper expenses that violated the E-Government Act of 2002. The ruling came in a class action that alleged the judiciary’s administrative office set fees too high for the online portal Public Access to Court Electronic Records, commonly known as PACER.