Yes, you can sue the government in the United States, but only when a statute has given you permission. Federal, state, and local governments all start with sovereign immunity, meaning they cannot be taken to court without their own consent. Congress and state legislatures have passed laws that lift that immunity for certain kinds of harm, and those laws set the deadlines, the procedures, and the ceiling on what you can recover. The path you take depends on who hurt you and how.
Why Sovereign Immunity Is the Starting Point
Sovereign immunity is the default rule: no lawsuit against the government unless the government has agreed to be sued. Every claim against a government defendant begins with the same threshold question, which is whether a statute authorizes this particular type of claim. If the answer is no, the strength of your underlying case does not matter.
The scope of each waiver is narrow and specific. A statute that allows suits for negligent driving by a federal employee does not allow suits for defamation by the same employee. So the first practical step is matching your situation to the right statute.
Which Path Fits Your Situation
The four main routes break down by who caused the harm and what kind of harm it was.
- A federal employee’s negligence injured you: the Federal Tort Claims Act.
- A state or local official violated your constitutional rights: 42 U.S.C. § 1983.
- A federal officer violated your constitutional rights: a Bivens claim, which is now available only in a narrow set of scenarios.
- A state, county, or city employee was negligent: that state’s own tort claims act.
Each route has different deadlines, different procedures, and different limits on damages. Mixing them up, or missing the first deadline, is how most claims against the government die.
Suing the Federal Government for Negligence
The Federal Tort Claims Act, enacted in 1946, is the main statute for injuries caused by federal employees acting within the scope of their job. A postal carrier running a red light, an unmarked wet floor in a federal building, negligent care at a federal facility: these are the kinds of situations the FTCA was built for. The government’s liability tracks what a private employer’s would be in the same circumstances, with two hard limits. You cannot recover punitive damages, and you cannot recover pre-judgment interest.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 U.S. Code 2674 – Liability of United States
File the Administrative Claim First
You cannot walk straight into federal court with an FTCA case. The statute bars any lawsuit until the responsible agency has received a written claim and denied it in writing.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 U.S. Code 2675 – Disposition by Federal Agency as Prerequisite Most people use Standard Form 95 (SF-95), which the Department of Justice and the individual agencies make available online.3U.S. Department of Justice. Civil Division – Documents and Forms Whatever form you use, it needs to include a factual description of what happened, supporting documentation like police reports and medical records, and a specific dollar amount you are claiming, called a sum certain.
The sum certain trips people up. Leave it off and the submission is not a valid claim, which can forfeit your rights entirely.3U.S. Department of Justice. Civil Division – Documents and Forms Whatever number you put down generally caps your recovery in court later, unless you can show newly discovered evidence or intervening facts. If your injuries are still developing, estimate future costs and include that projection rather than picking a comfortable round number.
The Two-Year Deadline
The administrative claim has to reach the agency within two years of the date the claim accrues, which is usually the date you were injured. Miss it and the claim is permanently barred. There is no good-cause exception and no equitable extension.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 U.S. Code 2401 – Time for Commencing Action Against United States Two years sounds like plenty until you factor in figuring out which agency is responsible, obtaining records, and pricing out future damages.
Moving From the Agency to Court
Once the agency has your claim, one of two things happens. It denies the claim in writing, in which case you have six months from the mailing date of the denial to file suit in federal district court.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 U.S. Code 2401 – Time for Commencing Action Against United States Or it does nothing for six months, at which point you can treat the silence as a denial and file whenever you’re ready.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 U.S. Code 2675 – Disposition by Federal Agency as Prerequisite
FTCA cases are decided by a judge. The statute forbids jury trials in tort cases against the United States.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 U.S. Code 2402 – Jury Trial in Actions Against United States That matters. Judges who have seen hundreds of these cases tend to be more restrained on damages than a sympathetic jury would be.
Attorney Fees Are Capped
The FTCA limits what your lawyer can charge. Fees cannot exceed 20 percent of an administrative recovery or 25 percent of a recovery reached after suit is filed, and they come out of the award rather than being added to it.6Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 U.S. Code 2678 – Attorney Fees; Penalty An attorney who charges more faces up to a $2,000 fine and up to a year in prison. The caps sit well below the 33 to 40 percent contingency fees common in private personal injury work, which can make it harder to find counsel for a complex claim with modest damages.
What the FTCA Does Not Cover
The waiver has real gaps, and each of them is a place where claimants assume they have a case and don’t.
Discretionary Decisions
The FTCA does not cover claims based on a federal employee’s exercise of judgment or policy choice.7Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 U.S. Code 2680 – Exceptions If an agency decides how to spread a limited road maintenance budget and a pothole goes unfixed, that is a discretionary call, and courts will not second-guess it. The exception falls away when a mandatory rule already dictated what the employee had to do. Ignoring an existing safety protocol is not discretion.
Most Intentional Torts
You generally cannot use the FTCA to sue the federal government for intentional wrongdoing like defamation, fraud, or interference with a contract. Congress carved out one important exception. When a federal officer with the power to make arrests, execute searches, or seize evidence commits assault, battery, false imprisonment, false arrest, abuse of process, or malicious prosecution, the government can be held liable.7Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 U.S. Code 2680 – Exceptions That is the “law enforcement proviso,” and it is the reason victims of federal agent misconduct have any tort remedy against the government at all.
Injuries Incident to Military Service
Active-duty service members cannot bring FTCA claims for injuries that are “incident to service” under the Feres doctrine. Training injuries and negligent care at a military hospital are the classic examples. Congress opened one narrow window in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020: service members can now file administrative claims for medical malpractice by Department of Defense health care providers at covered military treatment facilities.8Federal Register. Medical Malpractice Claims by Members of the Uniformed Services These claims run through a special administrative process, not a federal lawsuit. Non-economic damages are capped, and economic damages are reduced by DoD or VA compensation already received for the same injury.
Suing State or Local Officials for Constitutional Violations
Negligence is one thing. Constitutional violations are another. When a state or local official violates your constitutional rights, the relevant statute is 42 U.S.C. § 1983, which creates a cause of action against any person who, acting under state or local authority, deprives someone of rights protected by the Constitution or federal law.9Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 U.S. Code 1983 – Civil Action for Deprivation of Rights Excessive force by a police officer, deliberate indifference to a jail inmate’s serious medical needs, and retaliation by a school administrator against protected speech are typical examples.
Section 1983 works differently from the FTCA in several ways. You do not have to file an administrative claim first. You can demand a jury. And if you win, the court can order the government to pay your reasonable attorney fees under 42 U.S.C. § 1988.10Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 U.S. Code 1988 – Proceedings in Vindication of Civil Rights That fee-shifting rule is what makes it possible for civil rights lawyers to take these cases on behalf of people who cannot pay hourly rates.
Qualified Immunity
The biggest obstacle in a Section 1983 case is qualified immunity. It is a court-created doctrine that shields individual officials from personal liability unless the right they violated was “clearly established” at the time, meaning a reasonable official in the same situation would have known the conduct was unlawful. If no earlier court decision addressed sufficiently similar facts, the official often gets immunity even when the conduct looks clearly wrong in hindsight. The doctrine is not just a shield against paying damages. It is a shield against the burden of trial itself, which is why many cases end before a jury ever sees the evidence.
Suing the City or County Itself
You can also sue the municipality, not just the individual officer, under Monell v. Department of Social Services. There is a real catch. A city, county, or school district cannot be held liable just because it employs the person who harmed you. You have to prove that the violation resulted from an official policy, a widespread custom, or a deliberate practice. One-off misconduct by a single officer is not enough. You need a pattern of similar violations that went uninvestigated or unpunished, or a formal policy that itself caused the harm.
Suing Federal Officers for Constitutional Violations
Section 1983 does not reach federal officers. For constitutional claims against them, the vehicle is a Bivens action, recognized by the Supreme Court in 1971 for Fourth Amendment violations during an unlawful search. The Court extended it to a handful of other constitutional claims after that, and then closed the door.
In recent years the Court has refused to extend Bivens to excessive force by a border patrol agent, to confinement conditions for post-9/11 detainees, and to First Amendment retaliation claims. The modern test asks whether there is any reason Congress might be better placed to craft a damages remedy, and if the answer is yes, no claim exists. As a practical matter, if your facts do not closely resemble the narrow scenarios the Supreme Court has already approved, suing a federal officer for a constitutional violation is a very long shot.
Suing a State, County, or City for Negligence
The FTCA reaches only the federal government. To sue a state, county, or city for negligence, you have to work under that jurisdiction’s own tort claims act. Every state has one, but the details vary a great deal.
The single most important variable is the notice-of-claim deadline. The FTCA gives you two years. Many states require written notice to the government within 90 days to six months of the injury. Some set it at 120 or 180 days. A few are more generous. Miss the notice deadline and the claim is usually dead, no matter how strong it looks on the merits.
State acts also differ in what claims they authorize, what damages they cap, and whether they preserve immunity for particular government functions like road design or emergency response. If you think you have a claim against any state or local government, the first thing to pin down is the notice deadline for that jurisdiction. It is almost always shorter than people expect, and it is almost always what kills otherwise valid cases.