Courthouse Affordability and Space Efficiency Act of 2025
Floor Speech
Mr. Speaker, I support H.R. 3426, the Courthouse Affordability and Space Efficiency Act of 2025, or CASE Act.
I thank my colleague from, I almost want to say Louisiana because of his familial ties to the naming of Shreveport, but my across-the-hall neighbor in the Cannon Building, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Shreve), I thank him for his leadership and support on this issue.
This bill develops space-sharing guidelines to prevent overbuilding of new Federal courthouses. As a former Department of Justice staffer and a former Federal law clerk myself, I have had the privilege to see many beautiful courthouses and courtrooms across this country, and so I have seen how empty and underutilized many of those spaces are.
By implementing these standards into the design guide for Federal courthouses, the GSA will be able to reduce construction costs and ensure that existing spaces in courthouse complexes are being fully utilized.
Over the last 45 years, the GAO has compiled a large body of work on Federal courthouse construction, much of it at the request of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.
GAO has found that the judiciary has requested and received courthouses that are larger than the size authorized by Congress, more expensive to build, and more expensive to operate than Congress was aware of.
The judiciary has tried, however, to meet the concerns of Congress over the last several years. Recently, the judicial conference revised its courtroom allocation planning assumptions. New courtroom construction projects are to be designed to facilitate courtroom sharing for senior district judges, magistrate judges, and bankruptcy judges.
There is still some cause for concern. This legislation, by establishing sharing guidelines for active district court judges, will certainly help.
I support this legislation because this is about making the American taxpayer dollar go further and making more sensible investments. I urge my colleagues to do the same.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. FIGURES. Mr. Speaker, I support H.R. 3426, the CASE Act, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.
I yield back the balance of my time.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source