diff --git a/.pre-commit-config.yaml b/.pre-commit-config.yaml
index f6835f7..06d38a9 100644
--- a/.pre-commit-config.yaml
+++ b/.pre-commit-config.yaml
@@ -80,6 +80,11 @@ repos:
       - id: end-of-file-fixer
         name: run end-of-file-fixer
         description: makes sure files end in a newline and only a newline
+      - id: file-contents-sorter
+        name: run file-contents-sorter
+        description: sort the lines in specified files (defaults to alphabetical)
+        args: [--unique]
+        files: ^dev/release/rat_exclude_files\.txt$
       - id: fix-byte-order-marker
         name: run fix-byte-order-marker
         description: removes UTF-8 byte order marker
diff --git a/dev/release/rat_exclude_files.txt b/dev/release/rat_exclude_files.txt
index d5ceb40..1ba5044 100644
--- a/dev/release/rat_exclude_files.txt
+++ b/dev/release/rat_exclude_files.txt
@@ -1,26 +1,26 @@
-Cargo.lock
 *.ipynb
 *.json
 *.svg
-site/**
-docs-overrides/**
-raster/output/**
-spatialbench/data/**
-dev/release/rat_exclude_files.txt
 .gitignore
 .gitkeep
-filtered_rat.txt
-rat.txt
-docs/requirements.txt
-docs/javascripts/katex.js
-docs/stylesheets/extra.css
-target/**
 ARCHITECTURE.md
+Cargo.lock
 Cargo.toml
 README.md
-spatialbench-config.yml
+dev/release/rat_exclude_files.txt
+docs-overrides/**
+docs/javascripts/katex.js
 docs/queries.md
+docs/requirements.txt
+docs/stylesheets/extra.css
+filtered_rat.txt
+raster/output/**
+rat.txt
+site/**
 spatialbench-cli/CONFIGURATION.md
 spatialbench-cli/Cargo.toml
 spatialbench-cli/README.md
 spatialbench-cli/pyproject.toml
+spatialbench-config.yml
+spatialbench/data/**
+target/**