Per component, not per filing
This district is unusually explicit about how the ceiling is applied: it governs each individual component of an electronic filing rather than the filing as a whole. A motion accompanied by several exhibits is measured as a motion plus several exhibits, each against the same 35 MB figure.
That distinction is worth understanding because it is the opposite of how many state systems work. Systems built on Tyler's Odyssey platform enforce both a per-document limit and a lower ceiling on the entire submission, so a set of individually acceptable documents can still be refused together. CM/ECF in this district does not work that way.
Why a component gets this large
Thirty-five megabytes is generous for a brief and modest for a scan. Documents that exceed it are overwhelmingly scanned paper, photographs, or exports that embedded images at their original capture resolution.
The usual culprit is color. Scanning ordinary black-on-white paper in color triples the data recorded per pixel to describe a page that has essentially two tones. Resolution is the other: capture at 600 DPI stores four times the pixels of 300 DPI for a page that will be read on a screen at a fraction of either.
Compression addresses both after the fact, resampling the embedded images downward while leaving any real text in the document untouched.
Checking the limit yourself
CM/ECF reports its own current ceiling. From the CM/ECF startup page, the Court Information link shows the Maximum PDF File Size the system will accept at that moment. That figure is authoritative for the system you are actually filing into, and it is worth a look whenever a filing is refused for size — districts raise these limits without much announcement, and a number you remember from last year may simply be out of date.
If the file is an exhibit
Lossy compression alters a file. Every byte of the output differs from the input, even where the page looks identical on screen, and that can matter if the document's authenticity is ever contested. ShrinkWrit shows the SHA-256 hash of the file you started with and the file it produced, so the change is documented rather than invisible.
The lossless mode strips metadata and repacks the file without touching a single pixel or sample. It saves less, and on a heavily scanned document it may not reach the limit at all — but when it does, the image data is bit-for-bit what it was. Your original is never modified either way; the output is always a new file.
Common questions
- Does the 35 MB limit apply to my whole filing?
- No. This district applies it to each component separately — the motion and each exhibit may each be up to 35 MB.
- Is there an envelope or transaction limit as well?
- CM/ECF in this district publishes a per-component figure rather than a separate ceiling on the submission as a whole. Envelope limits are a feature of Tyler Odyssey state systems, not of CM/ECF.
- How much can a scanned exhibit realistically shrink?
- A 600 DPI color scan resampled to 200 DPI commonly drops 80–90% of its size. The remaining file is legible on screen and in print at ordinary sizes. Text-native PDFs, by contrast, are already compact and may barely change.
- Is anything uploaded when I compress here?
- No. The compression runs in your browser. Nothing is transmitted, no account is required, and there is no server holding your file.
The 35 MB figure on this page was last checked against the court’s own notice on Jul 2026. Limits change without much announcement — confirm it at the source before you file.