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Advocates and judges warn OAH understaffed as filings surge to record levels
Summary
Advocates, legal-service groups and OAH leadership told the Council the Office of Administrative Hearings faces a caseload surge and staffing shortfall that has driven a case-closure rate down to 64% and produced a backlog they said requires staffing, data and procedural fixes.
Chair Ward 1 Councilmember Brianne Nadeau convened a performance oversight hearing where multiple witnesses pressed for more staffing and transparency at the Office of Administrative Hearings (OAH). Nancy Drain, executive director of the DC Access to Justice Commission, told the committee that "staffing deficits continue to be an area of concern with a 31% increase in case filings from the prior year, a budget that is persistently insufficient to expand staff to meet those needs, and a high number of unfilled vacancies, as high as 25 as of 12/01/2025." The advocates said vacancies have real consequences for residents who rely on timely decisions to receive benefits and services.
Chief Administrative Law Judge Colleen Curry testified that OAH received 44,305 new case filings in fiscal year 2025, a 31% increase from the prior year, and that OAH disposed of 28,477 cases in that same year. She said OAH's case-closure rate fell to an all-time low of about 64% and pointed to a four-month hiring suspension tied to a mayoral spending order that delayed recruitment. "Staffing" and "the growing number of cases" were cited repeatedly in the record as the central operational constraint.
Committee members pressed Curry on how many additional staff would be needed; she said earlier staffing studies estimated substantially higher clerk and judge staffing (for 2024 the study suggested roughly 97 clerk-office staff and 52 judges) and that filling the currently authorized vacancies would help but not fully resolve the problem. Witnesses and the chief judge urged a combination of hiring, targeted process changes and better data collection (including staff-time tracking by case type) so the Council can set staffing priorities and measure progress.
The hearing produced no formal resolution but left the committee with a clear list of oversight requests: updated vacancy counts, a timeline for filling critical clerk and resource-center positions, and a plan from OAH for expanding publicly available operational metrics.
