| U.S. Government Files 58 Percent Fewer Civil Lawsuits in Federal Courts |
| (22 Jul 2019)
The latest available data from the federal courts show that during June 2019 the United States Government filed 291 new federal civil suits.
This meant that during the first nine months of FY 2019 a total of 2,388 suits were filed in the 92 federal district courts where this information was readily available. If the pace of filings continues for the final quarter of the fiscal year, such government suits are estimated to reach less than 3,200. This is down from 4,273 lawsuits the federal government brought last year, and even a larger drop from ten years ago when such suits topped more than 7,500. Thus, such civil actions have fallen by approximately 58 percent since FY 2009 according to the case-by-case court records analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University.
Relative to the total civil workload of the U.S. District Courts, U.S. government filed suits have always been relatively rare. U.S. initiated actions made up only 3 percent of suits filed ten years ago in these districts. This year they have dropped to just 1 percent. The composition of these suits has also undergone some change over the past decade. Ten years ago the largest number of federal government civil filings was for recovery of defaulted student loans. They made up one out of every four government-initiated civil suits. Available statistics indicate that "a million students continue to default every year and nearly nine million are now in default." However, federal suits seeking recovery of moneys from former students are dropping. For more details see the full report at: https://trac.syr.edu/tracreports/civil/567/ Each month, TRAC offers a report focused on one area of civil litigation in the U.S. district courts. In addition, subscribers to the TRACFed data service can generate custom reports by district, office, nature of suit or federal jurisdiction with data updated through June 2019. To start, go to: https://trac.syr.edu/interpreter?tab=civil If you want to be sure to receive notification whenever updated data become available, sign up at: https://tracfed.syr.edu/cgi-bin/tracuser.pl?pub=1 or follow us on Twitter @tracreports or like us on Facebook: https://facebook.com/tracreports TRAC is self-supporting and depends on foundation grants, individual contributions and subscription fees for the funding needed to obtain, analyze and publish the data we collect on the activities of the US Federal government. To help support TRAC's ongoing efforts, go to: https://trac.syr.edu/cgi-bin/sponsor/sponsor.pl |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Copyright 2019