Budget Cuts Leave Six Percent of Federal Court Jobs Vacant

As the federal Judiciary awaited its fiscal year 2005 appropriation from Congress, courts already caught in a money crunch slashed 1,350 jobs in the preceding months.

The Judiciary is believed to be the only federal entity that was forced to downsize to this degree, a cut that represents six percent of the employees who worked for clerks of court or probation and pretrial services offices.

The cuts hit both large and small court staffs throughout the country. The Western District of Tennessee lost the highest percentage of its employees from October 5, 2003 to October 17, 2004—30 out of 192, for a 15.6 percent cut. A close second is Alaska , which lost 11 of its 72 employees—a 15.3 percent cut. The Central District of California, based in Los Angeles , lost the largest number—80 of its 957 employees.

“These cuts come at a time when homeland security, criminal, and bankruptcy filings are spiraling upward, and when the fiscal year 2005 budget remains in question,” said Leonidas Ralph Mecham, Director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.

The Judiciary’s budget is less than two-tenths of one percent of the entire federal budget.

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