# Bankruptcy filings by district and state, calendar 2024 and 2025, v1 (FJC-derived)

Generated 2026-09-20 by `scripts/build_filings_by_district.py`. Data file: `filings_by_district_v1.csv` (15,787 rows; 93 districts, 54 states and territories, national; monthly and annual; by chapter).

## What it is

Counts of bankruptcy cases filed, by the month and calendar year of the petition date, for each U.S. bankruptcy district, each state or territory (districts summed), and the nation, broken out by chapter at filing (7, 11, 12, 13, 9, 15, other) plus an `all` row. Calendar years 2024 and 2025 only. Data through **2025-12-31**.

## Source and snapshot

Federal Judicial Center Integrated Database, Bankruptcy Petition NewSTATS Snapshots. One row per case (latest snapshot row per `casekey`). Snapshot in use: **filings through 2025-12-31, dispositions through 2026-01-15, spine built 2026-06-12** (`daylight/aggregates/fjc_spine.db`, `cases_latest`).

## The counting convention, pinned

- **Every case record with a petition date in the year is counted once**, whatever its type or later history. No filter on petition type (`casetyp`), debtor type, or transfer status (`origin`). This is the convention that yields the national 2025 figure below; the reconciliation shows the effect of the one plausible alternative.
- Chapter is the chapter **at filing** (`orgflchp`), not the current or closing chapter. A case filed under Chapter 13 and later converted to Chapter 7 counts as a Chapter 13 filing.
- Month and year come from the FJC `filedate` field (MM/DD/YYYY text).
- `state` is derived from the district's court identifier (`mowbk` = MO); PR, GU, VI, and DC are carried as their own codes. The Northern Mariana Islands (MP) recorded no filings in either year and has no rows; only nonzero cells are written.
- This file publishes counts only. No percentage, rate, or share is computed. Nothing here is a denominator for the site's published Chapter 13 discharge and dismissal percentages, which use a terminated-case basis under a convention that is still being reconciled.

## Reconciliation against the Administrative Office's published national total

| measure | value |
|---|---:|
| FJC-derived national filings, CY2025, all records | 575,052 |
| AO published national filings, calendar 2025 (Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, 12-month period ending 2025-12-31; figure as recorded in the OBP data memo of 2026-09-20) | 574,314 |
| delta (FJC minus AO) | +738 (0.13%) |
| of which: intra-district transfer records in the FJC file (`origin='i'`), CY2025 | 771 |
| FJC-derived national filings, CY2025, transfer records removed | 574,281 (delta -33, -0.006%) |
| FJC-derived national filings, CY2024, all records | 518,971 (AO comparison not performed here) |

**Why the two totals differ.** The AO's calendar-year table is closed on the AO's own statistical cutoff; the FJC snapshot is cut later (dispositions through mid-January 2026) and reflects petitions docketed, corrected, or re-dated after the AO closed its table. Separately, the FJC file carries a record for a case transferred within a district (`origin='i'`), which the AO's filing count does not treat as a new filing. Removing those records alone moves the delta from +738 to -33, which is the size of ordinary timing noise. The FJC codebook does not state which of the two conventions the AO table uses, so both numbers are shown and the all-records figure is the published one. The earlier spine verification (`METHODS_spine_v1.md`) measured the same kind of deviation at 0.09% for CY2019 and 0.28% for CY2023.

## National totals by chapter

| chapter | CY2024 | CY2025 |
|---|---:|---:|
| all | 518,971 | 575,052 |
| 7 | 310,934 | 356,864 |
| 11 | 8,968 | 9,249 |
| 12 | 217 | 319 |
| 13 | 198,513 | 208,435 |
| 9 | 3 | 2 |
| 15 | 0 | 0 |
| other | 336 | 183 |

## Columns

`level` (national, state, district) · `geo` (US, two-letter state or territory code, or court id with trailing `k`) · `label` · `state` · `period` (`YYYY` or `YYYY-MM`) · `period_type` (annual, monthly) · `chapter` · `n_filings`.

## What this cannot tell you

No county or city (the FJC carries district and office only). No debtor demographics, no attorney, no judge, no outcome in this file (outcomes for these cohorts are largely still pending at the snapshot). The snapshot is overwritten each FJC release, so a later release may re-date or add a small number of cases; the reconciliation row above is the measured size of that effect for 2025.

## License

CC0 1.0 Universal (public domain dedication): https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/. No attribution required. Suggested citation if you want one: Open Bankruptcy Project, "Bankruptcy filings by district and state, CY2024-2025, v1 (FJC-derived)," https://1328f.org/data/filings_by_district_v1.csv, 2026-09-20.