The Federal Judicial Vacancy Count 3/1/2025

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March 1, 2025

Welcome to the Federal Vacancy Count for March 1, 2025! The Federal Vacancy Count tracks vacancies, nominations, and confirmations to all United States Article III federal courts.

This month's edition covers activity from February 2, 2025, through March 1, 2025, and compares Article III judicial appointments over time by president and by court type through March 1 of their first year in office.[1]

HIGHLIGHTS
  • Vacancies: There was one new judicial vacancy since the February 1, 2025 report. There are 43 vacancies out of 870 active Article III judicial positions in courts covered in this report. Including the United States Court of Federal Claims and the United States territorial courts, 44 of 890 active federal judicial positions were vacant.
  • Nominations: There were no new nominations since the previous report.[2]
  • Confirmations: There were no confirmations since the previous report.

    • What's a vacancy?

    A vacancy occurs when a judge resigns, retires, takes senior status, or dies. Article III judges refer to judges who serve on courts authorized by Article III of the Constitution, which created and enumerated the powers of the judiciary. Article III judges are appointed for life terms. Unless a judge is impeached and removed from office—something that has occurred eight times in the history of the federal judiciary—it is the judge's decision how long they remain on the court. When judges decide to leave active duty, they may either retire completely from the court or take senior status.

    To take senior status, judges must meet certain age and service requirements. Senior status is a classification for federal judges at all levels who are semi-retired. Senior judges continue to serve on federal courts while hearing a reduced number of cases. Both a decision to retire and a decision to take senior status trigger a vacancy.

    The Constitution prescribes the process of filling a vacancy. The president nominates a candidate, who then must be confirmed by the United States Senate. There are multiple steps to the process:

    • The president nominates an individual for a judicial seat.
    • The Senate Judiciary Committee holds a hearing with the nominee.
    • After the hearing, the Senate Judiciary Committee votes to approve or return the nominee.
    • If approved, the Senate holds a vote on the candidate.

    For more information on this process, click here.

    Vacancy count for March 1, 2025

    The vacancy level was Bluedot.png in February 2025. The total vacancy percentage was 4.9 percent, and there were 43 vacancies out of 870 Article III judicial positions.

    A breakdown of the vacancies at each level can be found in the table below. For a more detailed look at the vacancies on the federal courts, click here.

    Key:
    (Numbers indicate % of seats vacant.)
    0%1%-9%
    10%-24%25%-40%
    More than 40%

    See also

    Footnotes

    1. ↑ The U.S. Courts website publishes data for the previous month on the first of the following month.
    2. ↑ For the purposes of this data, Ballotpedia considers the announcement of the intent to nominate an individual as a nomination.
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