Federal consumer protection litigation hit a 10-year high in 2025, with activity in the first half of this year on pace for another record-setting year, according to a Lex Machina report.
Some 20,353 cases were filed last year, a 31% rise on 2024’s levels and the highest annual total in the 10-year period of data studied. With more than 12,000 new lawsuits filed in the first half of this year, including almost 5,000 putative class actions, 2026 is on course to surpass last year’s total, Lex Machina’s data show.
Putative class action filings rose by roughly a third in 2025, with plaintiffs filing 8,091 cases – a new high.
Last year’s broader jump in consumer protection filings was driven by an increase in Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) claims, which rose 63% to 2,748 cases alleging TCPA violations. Fair Credit Reporting Act-related filings rose 44% to 7,750 cases, accounting for around 38% of all federal consumer protection filings in 2025, the data show. In the first half of this year, plaintiffs filed 4,986 FCRA cases.
Meanwhile, damages awards rose 35% to $7.5bn (excluding costs, fees, expenses and interest), even though the number of cases with awards declined to 437 from 452 a year earlier. A single $2.5bn consent judgment – Federal Trade Commission v. Amazon.com, Inc. – accounted for around a third of that total.
Data breach litigation also increased last year. Eric Wright, senior vice president for Lex Machina at LexisNexis, said: “Data breach lawsuits rose 21% in 2025, a trend that matters to businesses across industries that handle sensitive consumer information.”
In line with FCRA filings accounting for more than a third of cases, credit reporting companies were the most active defendants in consumer lawsuits between 2023 and 2025, led by Equifax Information Services with 7,802 cases during that period. It was followed by Experian Information Solutions with 7,716 cases and TransUnion with 6,821 cases. Consumer debt business LVNV Funding was the next highest with 839 cases.
The most active defendant law firms over that same period were Troutman Pepper Locke (handling 3,008 cases), Jones Day (2,685 cases) and Quilling Selander Lownds Winslett & Moser (2,485 cases).
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