Federal Civil Procedure Deadline Calculator
Computed under Fed. R. Civ. P. 6(a) · 40 deadlines across 6 categories, plus a Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure section and a statute-of-limitations reference table
Pick a deadline, enter the trigger date, and this tool applies the federal time-computation rule — excluding the trigger day, counting every calendar day (federal practice has no short-period exception), rolling the terminal day off weekends and legal holidays, and adding three days only when a paper was served by mail, left with the clerk, or delivered by another consented means — never for electronic service — and shows its work, step by step, with the governing rule or statute cited.
Advanced: additional non-court days
This tool always applies the federal legal-holiday list (5 U.S.C. § 6103(a), the 11 statutory holidays, shifted to the preceding Friday or following Monday when a fixed date falls on a weekend). Add any state holiday (forward-counted deadlines only — see above) or any other closure as a comma- separated YYYY-MM-DD date; these are treated the same as a federal holiday when rolling the terminal day.
Statute of limitations — reference only, not a calculator
Unlike every state on this site, federal law has no general civil statute of limitations. Under the Erie doctrine, a federal court applies the forum state's own limitations period for diversity claims, and usually borrows the most analogous state period for federal-question claims that don't supply their own. Use this site's own state-specific deadline calculators for anything that borrows state law. The handful of federal statutes below carry their own express period — confirm the current figure and any discovery-rule or tolling wrinkle before relying on it.
| Claim | Period | Citation |
|---|---|---|
| Title VII — EEOC charge | 180 days (300 days in a state with its own deferral agency) | 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(e)(1) |
| Title VII — suit after right-to-sue notice | 90 days after EEOC notice | 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(f)(1) |
| Fair Labor Standards Act | 2 years (3 years for a willful violation) | 29 U.S.C. § 255(a) |
| Securities Act of 1933 | 3 years after the violation, or 1 year after discovery | 15 U.S.C. § 77m |
| Securities Exchange Act of 1934 | 5 years after the violation, or 2 years after discovery | 15 U.S.C. § 78i(e); 28 U.S.C. § 1658(b) |
| Federal Tort Claims Act | Administrative claim within 2 years; suit within 6 months of denial | 28 U.S.C. § 2401(b) |
| Copyright Act (civil) | 3 years | 17 U.S.C. § 507(b) |
| Federal-question claims with no statute of their own (enacted after Dec. 1, 1990) | 4-year catch-all | 28 U.S.C. § 1658(a) |
What this tool does not compute
- Local civil rules and individual judges' standing orders. Each of the 94 federal judicial districts sets its own motion-briefing schedules, summary- judgment procedures, and discovery meet-and-confer prerequisites — several well- known examples are S.D.N.Y./E.D.N.Y. Local Civil Rule 6.1 (motion timing) and Local Civil Rule 56.1 (statements of undisputed material fact), and the Northern and Central Districts of California's own noticed-hearing-date briefing practice. This tool computes only the FRCP's own nationwide default — always check your district's local rules and your case's own scheduling order.
- Federal habeas corpus. 28 U.S.C. §§ 2254/2255 and AEDPA's own one-year limitations period, with its own specialized tolling rules, are a completely separate track from ordinary civil deadlines and are not modeled here.
- Bankruptcy adversary proceedings (their own Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure), patent cases (many districts' own Patent Local Rules), multidistrict litigation (new Rule 16.1, which is discretionary and carries no fixed day-count of its own), and the Supplemental Rules for Admiralty or Maritime Claims and Asset Forfeiture Actions (Rules A–G, within the FRCP but a specialized procedural track).
- COVID-era district general orders. The pandemic-era orders tolling deadlines and modifying service requirements have uniformly expired and are historical only.