Court case statistics show a large but uneven legal system. State courts recorded about 70 million filings in calendar year 2024, while U.S. district courts received 345,446 civil cases and criminal defendants in the 12 months ending March 31, 2025. Federal data also show sharp differences among civil litigation, criminal defendants, appeals, bankruptcy, and cases still pending.
Contents
- The national caseload snapshot
- Appeals and appellate courts
- Civil cases by jurisdiction and subject
- Criminal cases and defendant filings
- Bankruptcy cases and adversary proceedings
- Terminations, pending dockets, and supervision
The national caseload snapshot
The National Center for State Courts reported about 70 million state-court filings in 2024. That total was 4% higher than in 2023 but 27% lower than in 2012. These figures cover state courts and should not be combined directly with federal totals, which use a different reporting system and measurement period. National Center for State Courts, Data
For the federal judiciary, the 12-month period ending March 31, 2025 provides a more detailed snapshot. U.S. district courts received 345,446 civil cases and criminal defendants, including transfers. During the same period, they terminated 584,578 civil cases and criminal defendants, including transfers. The combined civil-case and criminal-defendant docket had 507,775 pending matters on March 31, 2025. Federal Judicial Caseload Statistics 2025
| Measure | Number or change | Period or date |
|---|---|---|
| State-court filings | About 70 million | Calendar year 2024 |
| Federal district-court receipts | 345,446 | 12 months ending March 31, 2025 |
| Federal district-court terminations | 584,578 | 12 months ending March 31, 2025 |
| Federal district-court pending matters | 507,775 | March 31, 2025 |
The different time frames matter. The state-court figures compare a calendar year with earlier calendar years, while the federal figures generally cover a 12-month reporting period ending March 31, 2025 or a count on that date. A filing is also not the same thing as a completed case: the federal totals separately report receipts, terminations, and pending matters.
Appeals and appellate courts
The 12 regional U.S. courts of appeals received 40,612 filings in the 12 months ending March 31, 2025, up 3% from the prior period. Civil appeals totaled 21,821. Criminal appeals rose 7% to 10,092, indicating that criminal matters made up a substantial part of appellate activity during the period. Federal Judicial Caseload Statistics 2025
The criminal-appeal total was concentrated in a limited set of offense categories: five categories accounted for 83% of criminal appeals. Drug and firearms-or-explosives cases together represented 56% of criminal appeals. Those percentages describe the composition of criminal appeals, not the share of all appellate filings.
Administrative-agency decisions generated 5,005 appeals. Board of Immigration Appeals decisions made up 75% of those administrative-agency appeals. Bankruptcy appellate panels received 329 filings, a 20% increase. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit received 1,459 filings and had 1,622 appeals pending at the end of the 12 months ending March 31, 2025.
These counts cover different appellate bodies and categories. The 40,612 filings are for the 12 regional courts of appeals, while the Federal Circuit and bankruptcy appellate-panel figures are reported separately. They should therefore be read as related indicators rather than added into one undifferentiated total.
Civil cases by jurisdiction and subject
U.S. district courts recorded 271,802 civil case filings in the 12 months ending March 31, 2025, down 22% from the prior period. Several jurisdictional and subject-matter categories moved in different directions:
- Diversity-of-citizenship civil filings fell 51% to 78,893.
- Federal-question civil filings increased 2% to 145,536.
- Cases naming the United States as plaintiff increased 9% to 3,315.
- Cases naming the United States as defendant increased 3% to 44,056.
- Intellectual-property-rights filings climbed 9%.
The overall civil-filing decline was especially pronounced in several large or visible subject areas. Personal-injury and product-liability filings declined 73%. Health-care and pharmaceutical civil filings decreased 60%. Contract-action filings dropped 13%. Only 93 multidistrict litigation cases alleging defective 3M Combat Arms earplugs were filed during the 12-month period.
Other categories increased despite the broader decrease. Civil-rights filings rose 6%, and employment civil-rights cases reached 2,547. Defend Trade Secrets Act filings rose 56% to 67 cases, while RICO-related filings rose 49% to 128 cases. The percentage changes for the two smaller categories are large, but their reported case counts remain much lower than the total civil docket.
The jurisdiction figures also illustrate why a single national change can hide different legal patterns. Diversity-of-citizenship cases declined sharply, while federal-question cases increased slightly. The dataset reports filing counts and percentage changes for these categories; it does not establish why any category changed.
Criminal cases and defendant filings
U.S. district courts received filings for 73,644 criminal defendants, including transfers, in the 12 months ending March 31, 2025, up 12%. Immigration defendants accounted for 40% of criminal-defendant filings and totaled 29,775. The five southwestern border districts received 89% of immigration-defendant filings.
| Criminal category | Filings or share | Change or period |
|---|---|---|
| Immigration defendants | 29,775; 40% | 12 months ending March 31, 2025 |
| Drug offenses | 16,069; 22% | Same period |
| Firearms and explosives | 9,571 | Down 2% |
| Property offenses | 6,711 | Up 1% |
| Sex offenses | 3,292 | Up 5% |
| Violent offenses | 2,599 | Up 3% |
| Traffic offenses | 1,956 | Up 4% |
The categories above are not necessarily mutually exclusive in the way a simple ranking table might suggest, so the figures should be treated as the reported category measures. Drug-offense filings represented 22% of criminal-defendant filings. Firearms-and-explosives defendant filings decreased 2% to 9,571, while property-offense filings increased 1% to 6,711.
The number of criminal defendants pending in district courts fell 3% to 109,654 on March 31, 2025. That pending count is a point-in-time measure, whereas the 73,644 received filings and the category counts cover the preceding 12 months. Criminal-defendant terminations increased 8% to 77,252 during the same 12-month period.
Bankruptcy cases and adversary proceedings
U.S. bankruptcy courts received 529,080 petitions in the 12 months ending March 31, 2025, up 13%. Bankruptcy filings increased in 86 of the 90 bankruptcy courts. The reported chapter counts were:
- Chapter 7 filings increased 18% to 320,571.
- Chapter 13 filings increased 6% to 199,130.
- Chapter 11 filings increased 10% to 8,844.
- Chapter 15 filings increased 26% to 273.
- Chapter 12 filings increased 67% to 259.
Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 accounted for the largest reported chapter totals. The very high percentage changes for Chapters 12 and 15 apply to small counts, so percentage movement there should not be interpreted as comparable in scale to the Chapter 7 increase.
Nonbusiness petitions grew 13% to 505,771 and represented 96% of bankruptcy petitions in the 12 months ending March 31, 2025. Petitions filed by debtors with predominantly business debts rose 15% to 23,309. These measures distinguish the broad nonbusiness and predominantly business groupings from the chapter categories.
Adversary-proceeding filings rose 31% to 17,395 during the period. There were 21,448 adversary proceedings pending on March 31, 2025, 18% more than a year earlier. Filings during a 12-month period and pending proceedings on one date are different measures, so the two totals do not describe the same stage of the bankruptcy process.
Terminations, pending dockets, and supervision
Federal civil-case terminations increased 70% to 507,326 in the 12 months ending March 31, 2025. Pending civil cases declined 37% to 398,121 on March 31, 2025. Together, these figures show why caseload reporting needs both flow measures, such as filings and terminations, and point-in-time measures, such as pending cases.
Federal post-conviction supervision also remained a large workload. A total of 120,378 people were under federal post-conviction supervision on March 31, 2025, down 2% from a year earlier. People serving supervised-release terms after leaving correctional institutions totaled 108,349, down 1% year over year. People on probation represented 9% of those under federal post-conviction supervision.
People on parole, special parole, military parole, or mandatory release totaled 464 on March 31, 2025, down 13% from a year earlier. Pretrial-services cases activated increased 9% to 76,794 in the 12 months ending March 31, 2025.
These supervision and pretrial-services measures are related to the federal justice workload but are not counts of new court filings. They describe people under supervision or cases activated for pretrial services, with the stated dates and comparison periods supplied by the federal judiciary. Federal Judicial Caseload Statistics 2025