The bill forbids federal courts from using the actual or perceived race, ethnicity, gender (including gender identity and sex characteristics) or sexual orientation of a plaintiff when calculating projected future earning‑capacity for a damages award. It defines “future earnings table” and “protected class” narrowly for that purpose and preserves the ability to award damages tied to protected‑class status when required by federal civil‑rights law.
Beyond the substantive bar, the bill tasks the Secretary of Labor (and the Attorney General for state guidance) with producing guidance and “inclusive” future‑earnings tables, orders studies by the Judicial Conference and the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts on damage awards and calculation tensions (including age and disability), and requires the Federal Judicial Center to train judges on complying with the new rule. The change will affect how experts prepare economic loss opinions, how courts admit and use those opinions, and how states are advised to handle similar calculations in tort cases.
At a Glance
What It Does
The Act bars federal courts from awarding damages that use projected future‑earnings calculations if those calculations take account of a plaintiff’s actual or perceived race, ethnicity, sex (broadly defined), or sexual orientation. It also directs the Secretary of Labor and the Attorney General to publish guidance and requires agency studies and judicial training to support implementation.
Who It Affects
Forensic economists, trial lawyers, federal judges, plaintiffs in personal‑injury and employment discrimination cases, and state courts (via non‑binding guidance) are directly affected. Employers, insurers, and defense counsel will see downstream changes in valuation of claims and settlement dynamics.
Why It Matters
The bill interrupts a common method—using demographic earnings tables calibrated to group medians—to project lost earnings. That change forces a choice between statistical accuracy and anti‑discrimination norms, reshapes expert work products and evidence strategy, and could shift settlement behavior and damage outcomes across a range of tort and discrimination claims.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The Act starts by setting two key definitions: what constitutes a “future earnings table” (any table or dataset used to estimate years worked or average future wages for a plaintiff, typically relying on median earnings in a region) and what the statute means by a “protected class.” The meat of the law is a single substantive prohibition: federal courts may not award damages using any projected future‑earnings calculation that takes into account the plaintiff’s actual or perceived race, ethnicity, or sex (and sex is defined to include gender identity, sexual orientation, and sex characteristics). That is a rules‑based ban on incorporating those characteristics into the numerical inputs or adjustment factors that produce a present‑value lost‑earnings figure.
The bill does not leave practitioners to fend for themselves. It directs the Secretary of Labor to develop guidance for forensic economists and to produce “inclusive future earnings tables” within 180 days, and it requires the Secretary and Attorney General to prepare guidance for states on conducting bias‑free future‑earnings calculations in state tort proceedings.
At the same time the Judicial Conference must study federal damage awards for personal injury and compile disaggregated aggregate data by case type and protected classes; that study must be completed within one year and reported to Congress within 18 months. The Administrative Office will separately study how courts can account for age and disability without violating equal‑protection principles.Implementation touches evidence and procedure: experts will need to justify models that exclude race‑ or gender‑based adjustments; courts (after FJC training) will receive instruction on admissible tables that comply with the Act; and states will receive non‑binding guidance from the federal agencies.
The statute includes a rule of construction clarifying that it does not prevent awarding damages because a plaintiff is a member of a protected class where federal civil‑rights law supports such an award—so the ban is about the arithmetic of projections, not denying remedy for discrimination.Practically, experts and litigators will confront technical choices: whether to use individually tailored projections that rely more heavily on plaintiff‑specific earnings history and occupation, to use regional or occupation‑based medians that are race‑neutral, or to adjust methods to remove statistical correlations that reflect past discrimination. Courts and agencies will have to balance those technical fixes against transparency, reproducibility, and the risk that removing demographic variables masks real occupational or regional earnings differences relevant to compensatory precision.
The Five Things You Need to Know
Section 3 bars any federal court damages award that uses projected future‑earnings calculations taking into account actual or perceived race, ethnicity, sex (including gender identity, sexual orientation, and sex characteristics).
The bill defines “future earnings table” to include any table or compilation of economic data used to estimate how many years an individual would work or their average future wage, tied to median earnings in a geographic region.
Within 180 days the Secretary of Labor must develop guidance and inclusive future‑earnings tables for forensic economists; the Secretary and Attorney General must also prepare state guidance on bias‑free calculations.
The Judicial Conference must study federal personal‑injury damages and provide disaggregated aggregate data by case type and protected classes within one year, with a report to Congress due within 18 months; the Administrative Office must study how to treat age and disability in calculations.
The Federal Judicial Center must provide training to federal judges on implementing the Act, including how to use admissible future‑earnings tables that comply with the statute.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Short title
Names the Act the “Fair Calculations in Civil Damages Act of 2025.” This is purely formal but signals Congress’s framing: the bill is aimed at the methodology of damage calculation rather than the availability of remedies.
Definitions: future earnings table and protected class
This section sets two operative definitions. The “future earnings table” captures any dataset or table used to estimate remaining years of work or average future wages tied to regional median earnings—a deliberately broad definition that sweeps in standard forensic economic tables and many labor‑market sources. The “protected class” term anchors the anti‑discrimination scope and points courts and agencies toward the protected‑class categories covered by federal civil‑rights norms.
Substantive prohibition on race‑ and sex‑based calculations
This is the operative mandate: federal courts may not award damages using projected future‑earnings calculations that take into account actual or perceived race, ethnicity, or sex (broadly defined). The language targets the inputs and design choices of expert models, not the overall availability of compensation. The section also includes a rule of construction preserving the ability to award damages because a plaintiff is a protected‑class member under federal civil‑rights statutes, limiting the provision’s reach to the arithmetic of projections.
Agency guidance and inclusive earnings tables
Within 180 days the Secretary of Labor must produce guidance for forensic economists and develop inclusive future‑earnings tables that do not rely on the barred characteristics. The Secretary and the Attorney General must also prepare guidance for states on conducting bias‑free calculations. Practically, this creates a federal playbook—procedural and methodological—that experts and courts will use to vet and admit future‑earnings evidence, although the guidance for states is advisory rather than binding.
Studies and reporting by Judicial Conference and Administrative Office
The Judicial Conference must study federal damages awarded for personal injury and collect aggregate data disaggregated by case type and protected classes, with a report to Congress. The Administrative Office must study how to reconcile calculations that consider age and disability with equal‑protection principles. These mandated studies are designed to inform longer‑term policy and to provide empirical footing for the guidance and training required elsewhere in the Act.
Judicial training
The Federal Judicial Center must train federal judges on the Act’s implementation and on using compliant future‑earnings tables as evidence. Training creates a practical compliance pathway: judges will get standardized instructions on admissibility, which will shape Daubert/Frye‑style gatekeeping and influence expert behavior and litigation strategy.
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Explore Justice in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Plaintiffs from historically marginalized groups — Removes an evidentiary pathway that could depress individual lost‑earnings awards by inserting group‑level, discrimination‑tainted wage differentials into models, increasing the chance that awards reflect the plaintiff’s individualized capacity rather than group averages.
- Forensic economists who adopt race‑neutral methods — Providers that develop defensible, race‑neutral valuation methodologies could gain market advantage as courts prefer experts using the new inclusive tables or DOL guidance.
- Civil‑rights advocates — The statute operationalizes an anti‑discrimination principle in damage calculation, preventing statistical adjustments that may perpetuate past discrimination in award amounts.
- Judges and courts — Standardized guidance and FJC training reduce ad hoc decision‑making about contested expert methods and create clearer admissibility standards.
Who Bears the Cost
- Forensic economists and expert witnesses — Must revise long‑standing modeling practices, validate new methods, and potentially re‑run analyses, increasing expert time and cost and raising litigation friction.
- Defendants, insurers, and employers — May face higher or more variable damages exposure if the shift away from group‑based adjustments changes valuation in favor of plaintiffs or introduces greater uncertainty to projections.
- State courts and legislatures — The Act only binds federal courts; states receive guidance but not a mandate, producing potential divergence in damages calculation across jurisdictions and compliance costs for multi‑forum defendants.
- Courts and agencies — The mandated studies, guidance development, and training will require time and resources; implementation and oversight burdens fall on the Judicial Conference, Administrative Office, DOL, DOJ, and FJC.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central dilemma is between anti‑discrimination in evidence and compensatory accuracy: preventing courts from using race‑ or gender‑based wage adjustments advances equity but can degrade the empirical accuracy of lost‑earnings estimates and complicate determinations of fair compensation, forcing a trade‑off between correcting statistical perpetuation of inequality and precisely measuring an injured plaintiff’s economic loss.
The bill creates several practical and doctrinal tensions. First, it asks experts and courts to remove demographic variables that are statistically predictive of earnings.
That can improve equity in arithmetic terms, but it can also reduce the empirical fit of models and raise disputes about compensatory fairness: if real world group‑level differentials reflect persistent labor‑market discrimination, excluding them may obscure injury‑related losses tied to systemic bias. Second, the Act applies directly to federal courts but only offers guidance to states; that bifurcation risks forum shopping and inconsistent remedies across jurisdictions.
Third, the deadlines (180 days for DOL tables; one year/18 months for studies and reports) are short for high‑quality statistical work, creating a risk that initial guidance or tables will be methodologically thin and litigated aggressively.
Implementation will also surface evidentiary fights: how should experts demonstrate a race‑neutral projection’s validity, and will judges have the tools to exclude subtle proxying (variables that correlate with race or gender)? The rule of construction preserves awarding damages tied to protected‑class status under civil‑rights laws, but it may be litigated: plaintiffs and defendants will contest when a damages claim is compensatory for injury versus remedial for discrimination.
Finally, the bill leaves unanswered how to treat intersectional disparities or occupational segregation in a way that balances statistical accuracy with the statute’s anti‑bias mandate; the agency guidance and studies will have to confront deeply technical choices about variable selection, model specification, and disclosure standards.
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