The latest available data from the federal courts show that during February 2016 the government reported 15 new voting civil rights filings. According to the case-by-case information analyzed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), this number compares with 7 civil filings during the previous month. So far during the first five months of FY 2016 there have been 42 such filings, including suits that were reopened this year.
The comparisons of the number of civil filings for voting-related suits are based on case-by-case court records which were compiled and analyzed by TRAC (see Table 1).
When monthly FY 2016 civil rights filings of this type are compared with those of the same period in the previous year, their number was up. However, compared with the same period five years ago, the data show that voting civil rights lawsuits are down 40.4 percent from levels reported in FY 2011.