It’s time for Congress to check the Judgment Fund’s pockets

Over the past few years, thousands of people have asked federal agencies to pay them for harms they have suffered at the hands of the government. Traffic accident and plane crash victims, veterans harmed by government medical personnel and individuals hurt on government property, for example, all may file claims asking the government to pay them for their injuries. 

Ultimately, it is up to Congress to decide whether to open the public purse to provide money damages to harmed individuals. But seventy years ago, Congress effectively ceded some of this authority by setting up a permanent, indefinite appropriation that allows the federal government to pay certain claims without asking Congress for money each time: the Judgment Fund.

Congress has imposed certain conditions on the use of this Fund, but in some ways it remains effectively unlimited—amounts in the Judgment Fund are available without further action from Congress and the government can use it to pay claims up to any amount. The Fund’s deep pockets have led to longstanding concerns, including accusations of administrations reaching settlements “out of proportion to the government’s litigative risk.” Politicians on both sides of the aisle likewise have expressed frustration, criticizing presidents for abusing the Fund and outlining the additional information needed to adequately conduct oversight.

At a 2016 congressional hearing on these issues, a professor recommended that Congress implement additional disclosure requirements to “help the public to understand how the Judgment Fund is being used” and “provide a deterrent against abuse that might take place at some point in the future.” Despite modest progress toward that goal over the past ten years, this potential “future” abuse is happening now. Over the past several months alone, legislators have highlighted multiple instances of President Trump’s escalating abuse of the Fund to further his agenda, including providing billions of dollars in Judgment Fund payouts to cancel offshore wind leases and redirect funds to the oil and gas industry and, of course, the president’s attempt to use the Fund to create a nearly $1.8 billion so-called “Anti-Weaponization” fund through his collusive lawsuit against agencies he controls.

Congress could respond to the critiques and shortcomings of the Judgment Fund in any number of ways. It could rein in the scope of the government’s settlement authority. It could set aggregate annual or case-specific limits on payments from the Fund and require the executive to ask for more money if it runs out. It could restructure the Fund to apply only to final court judgments, while requiring agencies to ask Congress for money for any settlement—including compromise settlements the government enters into for “defense of imminent litigation.” Or it could once again require a specific appropriation for each and every judgment or settlement—a power-of-the-purse friendly, but unlikely and inefficient, solution, considering that Treasury processed more than 9,000 Judgment Fund payments in fiscal year 2025 alone.

Regardless of the approach Congress chooses, it must put additional safeguards in place now to ensure appropriate transparency, oversight and independent review of settlements that provide for high-value or high-risk Judgment Fund payments. At a minimum, Congress should:

• Enhance transparency of proposed and actual Judgment Fund payments by expanding and conducting oversight of the existing disclosure requirements.

Conduct oversight of the Judgment Fund’s existing public disclosure requirements. By law, the Secretary of the Treasury must publish certain information about Judgment Fund payments. But these disclosure requirements apply “unless the disclosure of such information is otherwise prohibited by law or a court order,” and the Treasury Department has taken the legally dubious position that another statute, the Privacy Act, prohibits the publication of individual plaintiff, claimant or counsel names and the brief description of relevant facts from the public database in all cases. As CREW explains in a lawsuit challenging this unlawful policy, the Privacy Act does not justify Treasury’s categorical withholding of this information. Congress should conduct oversight of Treasury’s across-the-board policy of noncompliance.

Require the disclosure of additional information to identify potential conflicts of interest. Congress should expand the information that Treasury must disclose to facilitate review of payments from settlements that raise conflict of interest or corruption concerns, such as whether the claimant is—or in the six years preceding the claim was—an elected official, federal judge, political appointee, a relative of any of these individual officials, or a person who received a pardon from the sitting president.

Require disclosures before payment. Congress should require that Treasury also publish both of these sets of information for proposed payments from the Judgment Fund. By mandating the disclosure of this information at least 60 days in advance of payment, both Congress and the public will have an opportunity to scrutinize potential conflicts before the government makes a payment and, as outlined below, facilitate meaningful intervention for payments that contravene the law or the public interest.

• Limit agency authority to settle certain claims involving Judgment Fund payments over $1 million or to certain claimants.

Congress should prohibit agencies from using the administrative process for settlements involving a high-value or high-risk payment—that is, a Judgment Fund payment for a non-routine claim (excluding, for example, traffic accident or medical malpractice claims) that is: over $1 million; to an individual who was an elected official, federal judge, political appointee or a relative of any of these individual officials at the time of, or in the six years preceding, the alleged injury, filing or settlement; or to an individual who received clemency from the president serving at the time of the filing or settlement. These changes would prohibit the government from secretly settling certain high-value or potentially high-risk claims without oversight, while also allowing those claimants to immediately seek relief through a public judicial process.

• Require court review of settlements involving certain Judgment Fund payments.

For settlements involving a high-value or high-risk payment, a court should be required to approve any stipulation of dismissal based on the settlement. To facilitate the court’s review, the agency should be required to file a 60-day notice of settlement with factual information, legal justifications and a copy of the settlement, and to receive and respond to any public comments on the settlement. For its part, the court should be required to make specific findings about the fairness and reasonableness of the settlement.

This process—which applies to only a specific set of settlements involving large-dollar payments or potential conflicts of interest—would ensure that the government can continue to process and make payments on settlements for routine and lower value claims, while giving the public and the court an opportunity to meaningfully engage in reviewing potentially controversial settlements before the government makes any payment.

These reforms, described in greater detail in this proposal, retain the central purpose of the Judgment Fund—efficient payment of individual, run-of-the-mill claims—while enhancing transparency of all Judgment Fund payments, limiting agency authority to enter into certain high-value or high-risk settlements involving Judgment Fund payments and requiring thorough court review of those settlements. By providing more information to Congress and the public on all proposed and actual Judgment Fund payments and enhancing transparency, allowing for public engagement and ensuring independent court review for high-dollar value or potentially collusive payments, Congress and the courts can ensure that the government does not exploit the Judgment Fund for improper purposes.

Steve Buckingham, Brady Bender, Cynthia Brown and Sophia DiMarco contributed to this piece.