Legal Question in Civil Litigation in California

No court policy I have ever heard of requires fax filing. The usual court policy is simply not to have incoming fax machines for filing, meaning if you want to file by fax instead of filing he original documents, you have to use a service if you do not have someone with a fax machine who can walk the faxed document over to the court clerk for filing. If you know someone who lives or works near the court who can accept your fax and take it to court, there is nothing prohibiting it as long as they comply with the rules for filing faxes instead of originals. So, no, it is not a court mandated fee, any more than if you use a courier service to do your filing instead of doing it in person.