Finding Federal Court Locations by District

The federal court system is divided into 94 judicial districts, each with at least one physical courthouse where cases are filed, heard, and decided. Knowing which district covers a given location — and where that district's courthouse sits — is a practical prerequisite for filing, attending hearings, or accessing records. This page explains how the district system is organized geographically, how to identify the correct courthouse for a specific matter, and where the boundaries between districts create decisions that affect venue and procedure.

Definition and scope

The United States is divided into 94 federal judicial districts established by Congress under its authority granted in Article III of the Constitution (28 U.S.C. § 81 et seq.). Every state contains at least one district; larger states are subdivided into multiple districts. California, New York, and Texas each contain 4 separate districts. Alaska, Idaho, and Wyoming, among others, each form a single district covering the entire state.

Each district maintains one or more divisional offices — courthouse locations distributed across the district's geographic footprint. The Northern District of Texas, for example, operates divisional offices in Dallas, Fort Worth, Abilene, Amarillo, Lubbock, San Angelo, and Wichita Falls. A party locating the "correct" courthouse must therefore answer two sequential questions: which district has jurisdiction over the matter, and which division within that district is the appropriate filing location.

The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts publishes the authoritative directory of all 94 districts with addresses, phone numbers, and PACER contact identifiers at uscourts.gov/court_locator.

Bankruptcy courts, although organized within the same 94-district framework, maintain separate clerk's offices and physical locations that do not always share a building with the district court. The Federal Bankruptcy Court Process page covers those distinctions in detail.

How it works

Finding a federal courthouse involves three operational steps:

  1. Identify the judicial district. The district is determined by the geographic location of the parties, the property at issue, or where the alleged acts occurred — depending on applicable venue statutes under 28 U.S.C. § 1391 for civil cases or 18 U.S.C. § 3232 for criminal matters.

  2. Identify the division within the district. Most multi-division districts assign cases to a division based on the county in which the cause of action arose or where the defendant resides. Local rules — published on each district court's official website — specify which counties feed to which divisional courthouse.

  3. Locate the physical courthouse and clerk's office. The U.S. Courts Court Locator tool allows searches by state, city, or ZIP code and returns the court name, mailing address, phone number, and a link to the court's own website. Clerk's offices handle case filings, fee payments, and in-person record requests.

The Court Locator distinguishes between district courts, bankruptcy courts, and courts of appeals — a distinction that matters because a federal appeals matter filed in the wrong clerk's office will not be processed and must be refiled, potentially raising deadline concerns governed by the Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure.

Common scenarios

Litigants filing a civil lawsuit must match their filing to the division where venue is proper. If a plaintiff in Denver files against a defendant whose principal place of business is in Grand Junction, Colorado, both cities fall within the District of Colorado — a single-division district — so the courthouse location question is straightforward. Contrast that with the Eastern District of California, which operates courthouses in Sacramento and Fresno; local rules dictate which courthouse receives filings based on the county of origin.

Witnesses or jurors summoned to appear often encounter unfamiliar courthouse addresses. Federal jury summons issued under 28 U.S.C. § 1864 specify a reporting location; that location may be a satellite facility rather than the district's primary headquarters. The Federal Court Clerks and Administration page explains how divisional clerk offices operate relative to central district administration.

Attorneys seeking to access case records through the PACER system (pacer.uscourts.gov) must locate the correct court's electronic filing system, since each district maintains its own CM/ECF instance. Searching in the wrong district's PACER database will return no results for cases filed elsewhere. The Federal Court Records and PACER page covers PACER registration and record-retrieval in greater depth.

Self-represented litigants face an added complexity: the clerk's office location for filing is not always the same building where hearings are held. The Representing Yourself in Federal Court page addresses how to confirm hearing locations through the court's public docket.

Decision boundaries

Choosing between divisional courthouses within a district is governed by the court's own local rules, not by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. This creates a meaningful contrast with inter-district venue disputes, which are resolved under federal statute and can be transferred under 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a). An intra-district assignment to the wrong division is typically corrected administratively by the clerk's office rather than through formal transfer motion.

The distinction between a district court courthouse and a court of appeals courthouse is absolute: the 13 courts of appeals — organized into 12 regional circuits plus the Federal Circuit — maintain their own courthouses entirely separate from district facilities. A party appealing from the Northern District of Illinois files with the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, which occupies a distinct building from the district court. The U.S. Courts of Appeals page maps the circuit-to-district relationships across all 94 districts.

For a broader orientation to the federal judiciary and how these 94 districts fit within the three-tier hierarchy, the home resource at /index provides an overview of the entire federal court system structure. Detailed treatment of jurisdiction rules that determine which district is proper appears at Federal Court Jurisdiction Explained.