Civil courts handle a large and varied workload, from contract disputes and civil-rights claims to prisoner petitions and appeals. Recent U.S. federal data show a sharp change in district-court civil activity in the 12 months ending March 31, 2025, while Texas state figures show the scale of civil work in district and statutory county courts during September 1, 2023, through August 31, 2024. These figures use different reporting periods and court systems, so they should be compared only with those limits in mind.
Contents
- Federal district-court caseload
- Federal jurisdiction and filing types
- Civil cases by subject matter
- Resolutions, judges, and trials
- Federal civil appeals
- Texas state civil court activity
Federal district-court caseload
The federal district-court numbers for the 12 months ending March 31, 2025, show fewer new civil filings alongside substantially more terminations. U.S. district courts received 271,802 civil case filings during that period, a 21.9% decrease from the prior year. They terminated 507,326 civil cases, a 70.0% increase from the prior year, and had 398,121 civil cases pending on March 31, 2025. Pending cases decreased 37.1% from the prior year.
The same series provides useful historical context. District courts recorded 461,478 civil filings in the 12 months ending March 31, 2021, and 347,991 in the 12 months ending March 31, 2024. At the end of the 12 months ending March 31, 2024, 633,066 civil cases were pending. The 2025 filing, termination, and pending counts therefore describe a period with a lower incoming caseload and a much larger reported number of completed cases.
Source: Judicial Caseload Indicators - Federal Judicial Caseload Statistics 2025, covering 12 months ending March 31 unless otherwise stated.
| Federal district-court measure | Reported count | Measurement period |
|---|---|---|
| Civil filings | 271,802 | 12 months ending March 31, 2025 |
| Civil terminations | 507,326 | 12 months ending March 31, 2025 |
| Civil cases pending | 398,121 | March 31, 2025 |
| Civil filings | 347,991 | 12 months ending March 31, 2024 |
| Civil cases pending | 633,066 | March 31, 2024 |
The federal courts’ published figures are counts, not forecasts. They also do not by themselves describe the outcome, complexity, dollar value, or time required for any individual case.
Federal jurisdiction and filing types
The federal Judicial Business report uses fiscal years, a different reporting frame from the March-ending federal caseload series. In fiscal year 2024, U.S. district courts filed 290,896 civil cases. Federal-question cases accounted for 141,000 filings, while diversity-of-citizenship cases accounted for 104,254.
Cases involving the United States were separated into two categories. Cases with the United States as defendant totaled 42,567 filings, and cases with the United States as plaintiff totaled 3,069. Local-jurisdiction civil filings numbered 6.
The March-ending 2025 report records additional movement in jurisdiction categories. Diversity-of-citizenship filings fell 51% to 78,893 cases in the 12 months ending March 31, 2025. Civil filings with the United States as plaintiff increased 9% to 3,315 cases in that period. Because these figures come from different reporting frames, the fiscal-year 2024 totals and the March-ending 2025 figures are not a single continuous annual series.
Source: U.S. District Courts - Judicial Business 2024 for fiscal year 2024; Federal Judicial Caseload Statistics 2025 for the 12 months ending March 31, 2025.
Civil cases by subject matter
Subject-matter changes were uneven. Personal-injury and product-liability filings fell 73% in the 12 months ending March 31, 2025, a decrease of 78,097 cases. The report says U.S. district courts received 93 3M Combat Arms earplug multidistrict cases during that period, down from 57,600 the prior year. This is a specific multidistrict litigation count and should not be treated as a measure of all personal-injury cases.
Health-care and pharmaceutical civil filings decreased 60%, a reduction of 20,189 cases. Contract-action filings dropped 13%, down by 3,426 cases. In contrast, civil-rights filings grew 6%, an increase of 190 cases.
Several smaller categories increased by large percentages from relatively low reported totals. Defend Trade Secrets Act filings climbed 56% to 67 cases, and RICO filings grew 49% to 128 cases. Foreclosure filings increased 333% to 182 real-property cases.
Petition and immigration categories also changed. Prisoner-petition filings rose 5%, by 448 petitions. General habeas-corpus filings increased 13% to 3,084 petitions, while habeas-corpus filings involving alien detainees increased 66% to 618 petitions. Other immigration-action filings rose 3% to 11,894 cases.
These percentage changes are reported measures for the stated period. A large percentage increase in a small category does not necessarily represent more cases than a smaller percentage change in a large category.
Source: Federal Judicial Caseload Statistics 2025.
Resolutions, judges, and trials
Fiscal year 2024 federal data show continued movement in the district-court civil inventory. Pending civil cases fell 16% to 536,766. Civil filings declined 38% from 2020 through 2024, a reduction of 179,685 cases. The report also gives an unweighted measure: civil filings fell 39% from 2020 through 2024.
District courts terminated 396,635 civil cases in fiscal year 2024 and received 29,102 contract-action civil filings. Prisoner-petition civil filings totaled 49,182. These figures cover different activity measures: terminations describe completed cases, while filings describe newly received cases.
Active and senior Article III judges completed 10,292 civil and criminal trials in fiscal year 2024. The figure combines civil and criminal trials, so it is not a count of civil trials alone. The same report states that U.S. district courts reported 430 civil cases per authorized judgeship in fiscal year 2024. That workload measure should not be read as an average processing time or as the number of cases each individual judge personally completed.
Source: U.S. District Courts - Judicial Business 2024.
Federal civil appeals
The 12 regional U.S. courts of appeals received 41,824 appeals in fiscal year 2025. Civil appeals accounted for 22,812 filings, or 55% of all filings. Civil appeals increased 7.2% from 21,270 in fiscal year 2024 to 22,812 in fiscal year 2025, and pending cases in the 12 regional courts rose 6% to 33,748 in fiscal year 2025.
The civil-appeal total includes several reported categories. Prisoner-petition appeals totaled 8,430 filings. Appeals involving the United States as a party totaled 2,616 filings, while private civil appeals totaled 11,766 filings.
| Appeals measure | Fiscal year 2025 count |
|---|---|
| All appeals received by 12 regional courts | 41,824 |
| Civil appeals | 22,812 |
| Prisoner-petition appeals | 8,430 |
| U.S. civil appeals | 2,616 |
| Private civil appeals | 11,766 |
| Pending cases | 33,748 |
The categories identify filing volume and inventory. They do not establish how many appeals succeeded, how long appeals took, or whether a particular lower-court judgment was affirmed or reversed.
Source: U.S. Courts of Appeals - Judicial Business 2025.
Texas state civil court activity
Texas provides a state-level view, but the figures are limited to district and statutory county courts. During fiscal year 2024, defined here as September 1, 2023, through August 31, 2024, those courts recorded 1,076,826 total civil cases on docket. They recorded 378,439 new civil cases filed and disposed of 386,193 civil cases.
At August 31, 2024, Texas civil cases pending included 668,275 active cases and 17,814 inactive cases. These active and inactive counts are components of the pending inventory reported for the covered courts; they are not a national state-court total.
The Texas report also breaks out several judgment types. Courts recorded 50,756 civil default judgments and 57,903 agreed civil judgments during the fiscal year. They recorded 6,641 civil summary judgments, 39,901 civil final judgments after non-jury trials, and 989 civil final judgments by jury verdict.
The judgment categories are not interchangeable with total dispositions. A disposition can occur through many procedures, and the supplied Texas figures separately identify only the listed judgment categories. They should therefore be used as activity indicators rather than added together as a complete count of every civil case outcome.
Source: Civil and Family Case Activity Detail, September 1, 2023 to August 31, 2024.
The federal sources use different reporting frames: Federal Judicial Caseload Statistics cover 12-month periods ending March 31, while Judicial Business uses fiscal years. Texas figures cover district and statutory county courts from September 1, 2023, through August 31, 2024, and are not a national state-court aggregate. Counts and percentages are reported as published; the comparisons above do not add derived figures.