California’s federal courthouses were the busiest destinations for lawsuits under federal employment laws in the country in the past three years, a new report shows.
The federal court in Los Angeles, particularly, ranked as the busiest venue in the nation for federal employment lawsuits filed from 2023 to 2025, according to the new report that charted surging disability-accommodation and discrimination cases nationwide.
The 2026 Employment Litigation Report released this week by the legal analytics firm Lex Machina found that the Central District of California recorded 4,207 employment cases over that time period, or 5.6% of all federal cases nationwide. The Northern District of California was also among the top 10 venues, handling 2.3% of all the nation’s employment lawsuits.
Although litigation related to the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) decreased in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, federal claims alleging employers failed to provide reasonable accommodations to workers with disabilities shot up 42% in 2025, the report says. In addition, employment-discrimination lawsuits reached a record 20,261 last year, with significant concentrations of such cases being filed in California.
“Employment lawsuits in California asserting claims under California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA) have surged since the pandemic,” Lex Machina said in a statement emailed to the Southern California Record. “FEHA has been expanded in recent years to address emerging issues, including use of artificial intelligence in employment decisions, cannabis-use protections and family-medical leave.”
The company added that the surge in such lawsuits comes as economic sectors such as technology and media are experiencing dramatic shifts in workforce operations.
“That combination of expanded statutory protections at the state level and rapid workplace transformation for core industries increases the likelihood of disputes arising between parties,” Lex Machina said.
In total, 26,635 employment cases were filed in federal courts nationwide, a record high number, the company reported. And larger damages awards, some in the tens of millions of dollars, have likely encouraged new filings alleging disability-accommodation violations by employers, according to Lex Machina.
The surge in such cases reflects a rising number of disputes involving allegations of employer bias, medical conditions and post-COVID workforce changes, including the rising number of people engaged in remote work, the company’s researchers found.
Another trend identified in the report is the proliferation of pro se employment litigation, or claims that were filed without attorneys. Last year, more than 16% of federal employment claims were filed by plaintiffs without legal representation, according to the study, but the ratio of those cases in which the plaintiffs lost was more than 40-to-1.
To no surprise, the nation’s largest employers were parties in many of the employment lawsuits. In the 2023-2025 period, Amazon was involved in 581 cases; Walmart, 482; Walmart Associates Inc., 453; and United Parcel Service, 369.
The report found that a relatively small number of legal firms, such as Illinois-based Atlas Law Center and Florida-based Morgan & Morgan, were handling the largest share of such cases, but no California-based firms were among the most active firms.
“The Employment Litigation Report demonstrates a rapidly shifting liability risk profile for employers in the 2020s,” Eric Wright, senior vice president of Lex Machina at LexisNexis, said in a prepared statement. “From 2023 to 2025, employee claims on median took 1,021 days to reach trial, and courts approved nearly $2 billion in settlement awards for employment-related class actions despite reductions in FLSA claims. …”
Copies of the report can be obtained by registering at the Lex Machina website.
