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Plain DocketHow Maine’s public legal record actually works
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Illustrative image: a public reading room table seen from above, a bound docket book open beside a stack of photocopied pages and a pencil

Independent reference · Maine public record

The public record, explained before you need it

Most of what a state does in public is written down, filed and published, and almost none of it is written to be read by the person it concerns. Plain Docket takes the parts of Maine’s public legal record that ordinary readers actually run into, a records request, a discrimination complaint, a licensing board, a court decision, and explains how each one is built, what its published deadlines are and where the official text can be read. It quotes the statute or the agency page, with the date it was read.

Edition 2026 · Records · Commission · Boards · Decisions · Courts · Help

Illustrative image. No photograph on this site documents a real place, document or person.

01 to 06The six folios of this publication

Six ways into the same material: the record, the complaint, the regulator, the decision, the courts, and where the official text lives.

  1. Illustrative image: rows of archive boxes on metal shelving in a records room, one box pulled forward with its lid off and papers visible

    Public records

    Five working days to acknowledge, two free hours of staff time, ten cents a page: the numbers are in the statute, and they are short.

    01

  2. Illustrative image: an empty public hearing room with a raised panel table, name plates turned face down and rows of folding chairs

    Human rights

    A month to answer, an investigator, a seventeen day objection window, then a vote taken in a meeting that is open to the public.

    02

  3. Illustrative image: a framed professional licence certificate hanging slightly askew on a plain painted office wall beside a filing cabinet

    Licensing boards

    A board is not a trade association. It is created by a public authority, and most of what it decides is published under the name of the person decided about.

    03

  4. Illustrative image: a bound volume of law reports opened flat, dense two column text with a thin ribbon marker lying across the page

    Reading decisions

    The parts are always in the same order, and the part most people quote is usually the one the court did not write.

    04

  5. Illustrative image: a courthouse corridor with a printed daily list pinned behind glass, benches along the wall and light from a tall window

    Courts and dockets

    A docket is a list, not a place. Knowing which list a matter sits on is most of knowing how it will move.

    05

  6. Illustrative image: a public library information desk with a rack of printed leaflets and a screen showing a plain directory listing

    Where to look

    Almost everything summarised on this site is published, free, by the body that made it. This folio says where, and stops there.

    06

The shelfEvery page, dated

Every page carries the date it was published, and every figure inside it carries the date its source was read.

  1. Illustrative image: an open filing drawer of manila folders with printed tabs, one folder lifted clear of the others under office light

    · Public records

    What counts as a public record in Maine

    Maine's access statute fixes the numbers: five working days, two free hours of staff time, ten cents a page. The definition of what is public sits on pages the state's access site does not publish.

  2. Illustrative image: a printed request letter lying on a counter beside a date stamp and an inked pad, the stamp face turned away

    · Public records

    How a public records request proceeds, step by step

    Five working days to acknowledge, a nonbinding time estimate, two free hours of staff time, ten cents a page: the stages of a Maine records request as Title 1, section 408-A publishes them.

  3. Illustrative image: a photocopier lid raised over a stack of loose pages, a small coin dish and a tally sheet on the machine’s edge

    · Public records

    What a records request costs, and when money is asked first

    Maine's access statute caps what an agency may charge: two hours of staff time, then not more than $25 an hour, ten cents a page, with advance payment allowed once an estimate passes $100.

  4. Illustrative image: a returned envelope face down on a desk beside an unopened folder, a small red rubber stamp lying nearby

    · Public records

    What happens when a request is refused

    A refusal is not the last word in Maine: Title 1, section 408-A, subsection 4 makes every denial subject to appeal under section 409. What the published text gives, and what it leaves out, is laid out here.

  5. Illustrative image: an empty panel table in a public meeting room, microphones on stands and a carafe of water, chairs pushed in

    · Human rights

    What a state human rights commission actually does

    A discrimination complaint at the Maine Human Rights Commission goes to an investigator, a written report and a public vote, not to a judge. The published clock runs from a case number to a two-year limit.

  6. Illustrative image: a wall mounted process chart with numbered boxes and connecting arrows, the labels blurred beyond reading

    · Human rights

    How a complaint moves from filing to a vote

    A discrimination complaint at the Maine Human Rights Commission is not a lawsuit: it is a one-month answer, an investigator, a report, and a vote in a meeting open to the public.

  7. Illustrative image: a stapled report open at a summary page, a yellow highlighter uncapped across the margin, plain desk surface

    · Human rights

    How to read an investigator’s report

    An investigator's report at the Maine Human Rights Commission is not a ruling. It summarizes both sides' facts and ends in a recommendation, and the vote belongs to the Commissioners in public meeting.

  8. Illustrative image: a paper wall calendar with several dates circled in pencil, a small clock standing on the shelf beneath it

    · Human rights

    The right to sue, and the deadlines around it

    A Right-to-Sue letter is available once a complaint has been with the Maine Human Rights Commission for 180 days or more, and the court deadline that follows runs on a published greater-of rule.

  1. Illustrative image: a shallow wooden tray on a desk holding blank ruled index cards standing on edge, daylight from a window, not one card written on

    The public record, word by word

    Seventeen entries built on the same five fields, so that a reader can check a term without leaving the page they were reading.

    Ressource signature

The six folios are not a course to be taken in order. A reader who wants a document starts at Public records; a reader holding a decision starts at Reading decisions; a reader who is not sure which body is even involved starts at Where to look. Every figure on this site is quoted from a named published source with the date it was read.