Fair Labor Standards Act Civil Litigation Declining
The latest available data from the federal courts show that during November 2019 the government reported 528 new Fair Labor Standards Act civil filings for these matters. Litigation involved a diverse array of labor disputes including alleged denial of overtime compensation, collection of unpaid wages, equal pay and sex discrimination. According to the case-by-case information compiled and analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), at Syracuse University this number is down 16.2 percent over the previous month when the number of civil filings of this type totaled 630.
The long term trend in Fair Labor Standards Act civil filings for these matters going back to FY 2008 is shown more clearly in Figure 1. The vertical bars in Figure 1 represent the number of these civil filings recorded each year. The number of these lawsuits reached their highest level of 8,920 during FY 2015. Since then, the volume of litigation has declined to 7,287 during FY 2019. So far during the first two months of FY 2020 new filings have continued this downward trend.
Top Ranked Judicial Districts
Relative to population, the volume of civil matters of this type filed in federal district courts during November 2019 was 1.6 per every million persons in the United States. One year ago the relative number of filings was 1.9. Understandably, there is great variation in the per capita number of Fair Labor Standards Act civil filings in each of the nation's ninety-four federal judicial districts. See Table 1.
| Judicial District | Percapita | Count | Rank | 1yr ago | 5yrs ago |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ark, E | 12.2 | 20 | 1 | 6 | 27 |
| Fla, S | 8.9 | 67 | 2 | 3 | 1 |
| D. C. | 8.5 | 6 | 3 | 5 | 3 |
| N. Y., S | 8.1 | 42 | 4 | 1 | 2 |
| N. Y., E | 5.5 | 45 | 5 | 4 | 5 |
| La, E | 4.2 | 7 | 6 | 17 | 13 |
| Penn, W | 4 | 15 | 7 | 15 | 23 |
| La, M | 3.6 | 3 | 8 | - | - |
| Ala, S | 3.5 | 3 | 9 | 32 | - |
| Wisc, E | 3.2 | 11 | 10 | 19 | 44 |
The Eastern District of Arkansas (Little Rock) - with 12.2 civil filings as compared with 1.6 civil filings per one million people in the United States - was the most active during November 2019. The Eastern District of Arkansas was ranked sixth a year ago.
The Southern District of Florida (Miami) ranked second. The Southern District of Florida was ranked third a year ago, while it was ranked first five years ago.
The District of Washington, D.C. now ranks third. The District of Washington, D.C. was ranked fifth a year ago, while it was ranked third five years ago.
In the last year, the judicial district court recording the largest drop in the rate of Fair Labor Standards Act civil filings - 53.8 percent - was Southern District of New York. But over the past five years, Southern District of Florida showed the largest drop - 45.3 percent.
Each month, TRAC offers a free 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 via the TRAC Data Interpreter.