Nationwide Judiciary Phone Outage Disrupts Some Proceedings

A nationwide phone outage that struck federal courts has impacted some case proceedings, according to judges and the agency that oversees operations.

A spokesman for the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts said some district court cases were disrupted by the outage that began Thursday morning and stretched into Friday.

There was some progress in fixing the issue, the spokesman said. The cause was not disclosed. The administrative office said previously that cases weren’t disrupted but updated the situation on Friday.

Although district courts experienced some disruption, appellate court administrators said their courts did not.

In the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, the outage fallout was limited, Chief Judge Lee Rosenthal said.

“My understanding is that some criminal remote proceedings had to be rescheduled because of the telephone disruptions, but the issues were dealt with efficiently and well,” Rosenthal said in an email. The Southern District of Texas covers Houston.

The outage also impacted some proceedings in the Western District of Washington, which covers Seattle, Chief Judge Ricardo Martinez said in an email.

“We are currently handling the great majority of our criminal hearings, and all our civil proceeding, by phone so any outage will have an impact,” Martinez said. “Thankfully, we should be able to get back up to speed pretty quickly.”