In the aftermath of this week’s post “Are Petitions for Review Taking Longer to Decide?” I’ve been struck by the frustration conveyed privately by attorneys over the handling of petitions for review. Along with their concern over delays in granting petitions (the subject of the aforementioned post), they also shared anecdotal impressions that the court is taking an even longer, perhaps much longer, time to deny petitions.
None of us could conceive of a means to calculate the number of days between submission and denial of petitions reaching the court each year, so that topic remains shrouded for the time being.
However, one reader directed my attention to another set of figures underscoring the backlog hampering the court. He pointed out that the court’s statistical reports list not only the number of petitions for review granted and denied each month, but also the number still pending—awaiting decisions from the commissioners and justices. Compare the total of 414 pending petitions for March 2026,[1] he advised, with the March totals for previous years to gain a sense of how congested the court has become.[2] His recommendation yielded the following chart, which does indeed suggest a recent and abrupt logjam.
Others share his puzzlement. How could this occur when the court is neither receiving an extraordinary number of petitions nor filing many decisions? The explanation proposed most often to me centers on the retirement mentioned in the preceding post.
[1] March 2026 is currently the most recent month for which figures are available.
[2] The court’s monthly reports only go back through 2021.
About Alan Ball
What was the big change in the court in the 25-26 term? Karofsky became the Chief Justice. Hardly proof of anything, but it’s certainly possible that a change in administrative leadership caused the change in administrative work.