News from TRAC

Social Security Disability Lawsuits Reach Historic High in July 2020

(24 Aug 2020) The latest available data from the federal courts show that during July 2020 there were 2,500 new Social Security lawsuits filed in district court. Nearly all of the suits—more than 95 percent—sought review of the denial of disability as well as other benefits under the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) programs. According to court information analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University, the number of new lawsuits is the highest recorded since TRAC's systematic tracking of litigation began in October 2007.

July's figures are up 10.0 percent over the previous month (June) when the number of civil filings of this type totaled 2,273. In May filings totaled just 1,675. Compared to a year ago, July filings were up 17.9 percent. The previous monthly high point was in August 2013 when new filings reach 2,008 cases—the only month prior to June and July of this year when lawsuits topped two thousand.

Relative to population, the volume of civil matters of this type filed in federal district courts during July 2020 was 7.6 per every million persons in the United States. One year ago the relative number of filings was 4.7. The Western District of New York (Buffalo), the Eastern District of Washington (Spokane) and the Eastern District of Oklahoma (Muskogee) had the highest number of lawsuits in the country relative to their population size.

To read the full report go to:

https://trac.syr.edu/tracreports/civil/621/

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 July 2020. To start, go to:

https://trac.syr.edu/interpreter?tab=civil

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