How three funding gaps affected federal court operations

For a Regulation & Ethics risk record, the continuing resolution impact on federal agencies and courts is not answered by the headline “shutdown.” In FY2026, there were three federal funding gaps: 42 full days from Oct. 1 to Nov. 12, 2025; 3 full days from Jan. 31 to Feb. 3, 2026; and 75 full days from Feb. 14 to Apr. 30, 2026. That is 120 full days under the Congressional Research Service’s full-day convention, including the longest shutdown on record. The operative litigation question is narrower: whether the court is open for the function at issue, whether CM/ECF is accepting the filing, whether a local order moved the deadline, and whether a stay request by a government party actually applies to the case in front of you. [1]

This record is current as of Aug. 2, 2026. It is not legal advice and it does not replace the notice, standing order, or docket entry in a particular court. The day counts below use CRS “full days,” not calendar-day counts used by some public trackers. The anchor sources are CRS for the funding-gap dates and enacted-law references, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts for judiciary-wide operations, court notices for venue-specific obligations, and a law-firm district tracker only where it helps identify venue variance that still must be verified locally.

The FY2026 operating record, by funding gap

The table is deliberately blunt because that is how the risk presents itself on a docket calendar. A funding gap may be national. The filing consequence is not. The first FY2026 gap showed the full sequence: paid operations on reserves, then limited excepted operations, with electronic filing systems still live. The second gap was short enough that a court-specific notice could matter more than the national drama. The third was long enough, and agency-specific enough, that counsel had to separate judiciary operations from the funding source and litigation role of the agency in the case.

What actually changed when judiciary reserves ran out

The judiciary did not start FY2026 by turning off the lights. On Oct. 1, 2025, the Administrative Office said the federal Judiciary would remain open and continue paid operations by using available funds, while courts continued handling cases and operating probation and pretrial services. That was the reserve-funded phase. [2]

The harder operational line came with the Oct. 17 notice. The AO announced that judiciary funding had run out and that only limited operations would continue under the Anti-Deficiency Act. The same notice matters for docketing because it also stated that CM/ECF and PACER would remain operational. [3]

That combination is where bad shorthand causes damage. “Limited operations” does not mean “nothing is due.” A live CM/ECF system does not mean every hearing, deadline, and government-party obligation proceeds normally. The safe inference is only this: unless a rule, order, or docket entry says otherwise, the filing system’s availability leaves counsel with a filing obligation.

The observed FY2026 pattern was roughly two to three weeks of reserve-funded paid operations before the judiciary moved into a limited-operations posture. That is an observed pattern in these materials, not a statutory grace period for the next lapse. A future court notice could set a different runway, and a particular court can still issue a local order that changes the answer for a deadline even while national systems remain available.

Venue mattered more than shutdown labels

The cleanest example is the D.C. Circuit’s Jan. 30, 2026 notice. Ahead of the short Jan. 31–Feb. 3 gap, the court told parties it would continue normal operations through Feb. 5 and expressly preserved filing obligations. For an appellate deadline in that court, the practical answer was not “the government shut down.” It was “read the court notice; your filing deadline remains in place unless another authority changes it.” [4]

District courts did not all choose the same approach in the longer 2025 gap. Latham & Watkins’ district-by-district tracker, updated Oct. 23, 2025, identified a blanket deadline extension in the District of the District of Columbia and a blanket stay in the Southern District of New York for civil cases involving the U.S. Attorney’s Office, while other courts issued their own instructions or required more individualized treatment. The tracker is useful as a map of variance, not as a substitute for the local order. [5]

The distinction is not academic. If a D.D.C. order extends a class of deadlines, the docketing step is to identify whether the case falls within that class and then calendar the new date. If an SDNY stay applies only to civil cases involving the U.S. Attorney, the next step is to ask whether the United States is a party, whether the U.S. Attorney’s Office is actually involved, and whether the order reaches the motion, discovery event, conference, or appeal deadline at issue. If a circuit notice says deadlines remain due, counsel should not borrow a more generous district-court rule from another venue.

The First and Fourth Circuits also issued their own shutdown-related statements, as reflected in the Latham tracker. That point is enough for risk purposes: appellate practice during a lapse is not governed by a single district-court model. A notice from one circuit should not be treated as a portable rule for another. [5]

Government-party cases need a second screen

A case involving the federal government adds a second question after court operations: what is the government party asking the court to do? During the 2013 shutdown, the judiciary reported that the Department of Justice sought stays in civil litigation because of the lapse, and district judges responded through case-specific and court-specific rulings rather than one automatic national result. That remains the sound precedent to use here because the FY2026 DOJ contingency-plan PDF was not verified for this article. [6]

The Latham 2025 analysis likewise treated DOJ-related civil litigation as a stay-practice issue that varied by venue and order. A motion or blanket order may pause some obligations; it does not erase the need to check whether the case is civil or criminal, whether the United States is a party or merely an interested regulator, whether the U.S. Attorney or another DOJ component is appearing, and whether the requested stay covers all deadlines or only government obligations. [5]

Criminal, emergency, and constitutionally time-sensitive matters require particular care because shutdown practice often preserves functions necessary to protect life, property, and constitutional obligations. The sources here support the general point that limited operations continued; they do not support a universal statement that every category of case either stopped or proceeded in the same way. The docket entry and local notice decide the working answer.

The DHS-only gap should not be flattened into a normal DOJ shutdown story

The Feb. 14–Apr. 30, 2026 gap requires a different screen because CRS identifies the relevant dates, enacted-law sequence, and DHS-specific funding posture, including the mandatory-funding source. That matters to litigators only to the extent it changes the agency’s ability or incentive to seek relief, the lawyers appearing for the agency, or the court’s treatment of agency deadlines. [1]

A DHS case should therefore not be docketed from a generic DOJ-stay assumption. In immigration, border, transportation-security, disaster, procurement, or enforcement litigation, the first check is still the court notice. The second is the agency’s funding and representation posture. The third is the actual relief requested: extension, stay, continuance, abeyance, or no relief at all. Each has different docket consequences.

How to read a shutdown notice before a filing deadline

Before 11:59 p.m., the useful question is not whether a funding gap exists. It is whether the controlling authority for this filing changed. A defensible pre-deadline check should run in this order:

1. Read the court’s current operational notice, not a national news summary.
2. Check standing orders, general orders, and emergency orders for deadline extensions, stays, or limits on hearings.
3. Confirm whether CM/ECF is accepting the relevant filing and whether the court has given separate instructions for sealed, emergency, pro se, or paper filings.
4. Identify whether the federal government is a party, intervenor, amicus, regulator, custodian, or merely the source of an administrative record.
5. If the United States or an agency is involved, determine who represents it and whether a stay request or blanket order actually reaches the obligation being calendared.
6. Check the docket after any shutdown order issues. A general order may set the baseline; a case-specific minute order may control the filing in front of you.
7. Preserve the source record used for the calendar decision: notice URL, order number, docket entry, date accessed, and the resulting deadline.

For a checklist version of that check, use the site’s “Continuing Resolutions Affect Federal Courts and AI Oversight.” For the forward-looking appropriations layer, pair this FY2026 record with “The Legal Meaning of the Pending Continuing Resolution.” A litigation calendar should not carry a deadline change unless someone can point to the court, order, docket entry, or government-party filing that made the change.

References

1. Federal Funding Gaps: A Brief Overview, Congressional Research Service, updated May 26, 2026, link
2. Judiciary Still Operating as Shutdown Starts, Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, Oct. 1, 2025, link
3. Judiciary Funding Runs Out; Only Limited Operations Continue, Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, Oct. 17, 2025, updated Nov. 13, 2025, link
4. Court Operations in the Event of a Government Shutdown, U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Jan. 30, 2026, link
5. The 2025 US Government Shutdown: What It Means for Federal Litigation, Latham & Watkins, updated Oct. 23, 2025, link
6. Shutdown Holdup in the Courts, Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, Oct. 7, 2013, link