The sharpest decline in original proceedings between 2011 and 2021 was in the Fourth District – 41.43%.  The Fifth District was second, declining 39.06%.  New filings in the Third District were down 38.43%.  New original proceedings are down in the First District by 31.52%.  New filings were down 26.03% in the Sixth District.  The smallest decline was in the Second District, where new original proceedings were down only 6.6%.

There were 2076 new original proceedings filed in the Fourth District in 2011.  That fell to 1625 in 2015.  There were only 1206 in 2020 and 1216 in 2021.  The Fifth District saw 991 new original proceedings in 2011 and 1022 in 2012.  New original proceedings fell to 691 in 2015, 627 in 2020 and 604 in 2021.  The Third District saw 1067 new original proceedings in 2011.  That fell to 707 in 2015 and reached a low point of 657 in 2021.  The First District saw 1298 new original proceedings in 2011, but that number dropped to 931 by 2015.  In 2020 there were 914 new original proceedings, and filings fell to 889 by 2021.  There were 465 new original proceedings in 2011 in the Sixth District.  New filings fell to 345 in 2015 before reaching their low point of 310 in 2016.  Since then, new filings in the Sixth District have drifted up slightly to 372 in 2020 and 344 in 2021.  There were 2278 new original proceedings in the Second District in 2011.  That increased to 2813 the following year, but it was a one-year bump, as things trended down to 2182 in 2018.  There were 2109 new original proceedings in the Second in 2019, 2054 in 2020 and 1900 in 2021.

Next time, we’ll turn our attention back to the Supreme Court, looking at data about its docket.Image courtesy of Flickr by Jan Arendtsz (no changes).