The Office of Court Administration, the Texas Judiciary, and the Texas Judicial Council have released the Annual Statistical Report for the Texas Judiciary Fiscal Year 2019 with data from every level of court.

Highlights from the 2019 report include:
• Civil filings in district and county courts increased in nearly every category with debt cases accounting for 30% of the incoming caseload, an increase of almost 40% from the previous year.
• New misdemeanor cases filed have fallen to its lowest rate since 1991. In 2010, more than 535,000 misdemeanor cases were filed compared to less than 393,000 in 2019.
• Over the past decade, cases resulting in injury or damages involving a motor vehicle have increased 79% from over 34,000 in 2010 to 55,000 in 2019. These cases increased by 9% over the past year. Conversely, traffic and parking cases declined for the 13th straight year with 3.7 million fewer cases than were filed during the peak in 2006.
• 60% of mental health civil commitments were to an impatient commitment, a decrease of 3% from 2018.
• Child protection case filings declined by 7%, breaking a five-year trend of increases.
• Criminal cases against minors have fallen by almost 65% since 2012, but tobacco and e-cigarette cases have increased rapidly since 2016.
• The number of new felony cases filed increased each year since 2014 and reached an all-time high in 2019, largely driven by growth in drug possession cases. But the number of marijuana possession cases declined significantly beginning in June 2019, mostly due to a drop in the prosecution of these cases.
• After eight years of decline, the number of criminal cases filed in the courts of appeals remained level. Filings continued to decline in the Court of Criminal Appeals.

Read the full report here. To find out more about the Office of Court Administration, go to txcourts.gov/oca/.