Can You Sue the Federal Government? FTCA, Contracts, and Agencies

You can sue the federal government, but only when Congress has passed a law that specifically allows it. The doctrine of sovereign immunity blocks lawsuits against the United States by default, so every claim has to fit within a statutory waiver. The most common path is the Federal Tort Claims Act, which covers injuries caused by negligent federal employees. Contract disputes, constitutional violations by federal officers, challenges to agency decisions, and federal workplace discrimination each travel a different route with its own rules and deadlines.

Why You Need a Statute to Sue

Sovereign immunity means the government cannot be sued in its own courts unless it consents, and that consent has to come from Congress. If no federal statute waives immunity for the kind of harm you suffered, a court will dismiss the case for lack of jurisdiction no matter how strong the underlying facts are. That makes suing the government fundamentally different from suing a private company. You don’t just need a valid claim. You need to point to a specific law saying the government has agreed to be held accountable for that category of harm.

Suing for Personal Injury or Property Damage

The broadest waiver of immunity is the Federal Tort Claims Act. The FTCA lets you sue the United States when a federal employee’s negligent or wrongful conduct, committed while doing their job, causes you harm. Liability is measured by the same standard that would apply to a private person under the law of the state where the incident happened.¹ That detail matters. If a postal truck hits you in Florida, Florida negligence law applies. If a VA surgeon botches a procedure in California, California medical malpractice law controls, including any state damage caps.

Typical FTCA claims include car accidents involving government vehicles, medical mistakes at VA hospitals or military treatment facilities, slip-and-fall injuries on federal property, and negligent maintenance of federal buildings or roads.

What the FTCA Does Not Cover

Several categories of claims are carved out, and the government keeps full immunity for them:

Discretionary functions. Policy-level decisions are protected even if a different choice would have been safer. A decision about how to design a flood-control system is discretionary; a maintenance worker ignoring a broken guardrail is not.
Most intentional misconduct. Assault, battery, false arrest, false imprisonment, malicious prosecution, and similar wrongs are generally excluded. There is a critical exception for federal law enforcement officers empowered to make arrests, execute searches, or seize evidence, whose intentional torts of that kind can be pursued.²
Anything arising in a foreign country. An accident caused by a federal employee at an overseas base is outside the FTCA entirely.²
Claims tied to the assessment or collection of taxes and customs duties, and to the transmission of postal mail.

Damages Are Capped and There Is No Jury

Even a winning FTCA case has limits. Federal law prohibits both punitive damages and prejudgment interest.³ You can recover compensatory damages for medical bills, lost income, and pain and suffering, but nothing punitive. Because state law governs the substance of the claim, any state-level cap on non-economic damages applies too. Roughly half of states impose such caps in medical malpractice cases.

There is also no right to a jury trial in an FTCA case. A federal judge decides it alone.⁴ Since juries in personal injury cases sometimes award higher pain-and-suffering damages than judges do, removing the jury can meaningfully affect recovery.

If You Are Active-Duty Military

Active-duty service members face a barrier that doesn’t appear in the statute itself. Under the Feres doctrine, a judge-made rule from 1950, service members cannot sue the government for injuries that arise from or occur during activity connected to military service.⁵ The rule has blocked claims ranging from surgical errors at military hospitals to toxic exposure on base.

Congress created a partial workaround in 2020. Under what’s commonly called the Stayskal Act, active-duty service members can file administrative claims with the Department of Defense for medical malpractice at a covered military treatment facility.⁶ This is not a right to sue in court. It is a claims process handled inside the Pentagon, and the Department has denied the vast majority of claims submitted under it so far.

The Administrative Claim You Must File First

Before you can file an FTCA lawsuit, you must submit a formal written claim to the federal agency responsible for the injury. Skip this step and a court will dismiss your case. No exceptions.⁷ The claim gives the agency a chance to investigate and potentially settle, and it also functions as a gatekeeping mechanism.

Most people use Standard Form 95, titled “Claim for Damage, Injury, or Death.”⁸ The form isn’t strictly required. Any written notification works as long as it meets the regulatory requirements.⁹ The SF-95 just makes it harder to leave something out.

The claim needs four things:

A detailed description of what happened, including date, time, location, people involved, and how the federal employee or property caused the harm.
Enough information to identify the federal employee or agency involved.
Documentation of your damages, such as medical records, repair estimates, or proof of lost income.
A specific dollar amount, called a “sum certain.” The SF-95 warns that failing to state a specific figure can result in forfeiture of your rights. A vague request for “fair compensation” does not count.⁸

The dollar amount also sets a ceiling on what you can recover in court. Claim $100,000 in your administrative filing and you generally cannot sue for $500,000 later. The only exception is newly discovered evidence not reasonably available when you filed, or a material worsening of your condition after filing.⁷ If your injuries are still being treated, it may be worth waiting to file until you have a clearer picture of total costs, as long as you stay within the deadline.

That deadline is two years from the date of injury.¹⁰ Miss it by a day and the claim is gone permanently. The clock starts when the injury happens or, in some cases, when you reasonably should have discovered it.

From Administrative Claim to Lawsuit

Once the agency receives the claim, it has six months to act. It can pay the claim, offer a settlement, or deny it in writing by certified or registered mail.⁷

If the agency denies the claim, you have exactly six months from the date the denial was mailed to file suit in federal district court.¹⁰ Miss that window and the case is permanently barred.

If the agency simply goes silent for six months, you can treat that silence as a denial and file suit.⁷ Silence is your option, not a countdown. Unlike a formal denial, it doesn’t start a clock that could expire on you.

You must file the suit in the federal district where you live or where the incident occurred, and nowhere else.¹¹ Attorney fees are capped by statute. An attorney cannot charge more than 20% of an administrative settlement or more than 25% of a judgment or judicial settlement.¹² The caps are mandatory, and they can make it hard to find counsel willing to take smaller claims.

Suing Over a Federal Contract

The FTCA covers negligence, not broken promises. Contract disputes with the federal government travel under the Tucker Act, which waives sovereign immunity for claims based on contracts with the United States and certain claims for money owed under a statute or regulation.¹³ Government contractors, suppliers, and anyone with a payment dispute rooted in a federal agreement uses this route.

Claims over $10,000 go to the U.S. Court of Federal Claims in Washington, D.C. Claims of $10,000 or less can be filed in your local federal district court under the “Little Tucker Act.”¹

Suing a Federal Officer for a Constitutional Violation

When a federal officer personally violates your constitutional rights, a Bivens action allows you to sue that individual officer for money damages. The name comes from a 1971 Supreme Court decision involving federal narcotics agents who conducted an unlawful search.

On paper this sounds powerful. In practice the Supreme Court has spent decades narrowing it, and has recognized Bivens claims in only three specific settings: a Fourth Amendment unreasonable search, a Fifth Amendment sex discrimination claim by a congressional staffer, and an Eighth Amendment failure to provide medical care to a federal prisoner. The 2022 decision in Egbert v. Boule held that a Bivens remedy should be denied whenever there is any rational reason to think Congress might be better equipped to decide whether a damages claim should exist.¹⁴ That is an easy test for the government to satisfy, and new Bivens claims succeed only when they closely mirror one of the three recognized scenarios.

Challenging a Federal Agency Decision

Not every dispute involves a physical injury or a broken contract. If a federal agency denies your benefits, revokes a permit, or takes some other official action that harms you, the Administrative Procedure Act lets you challenge that decision in court. APA lawsuits don’t seek money damages. They ask a judge to review the agency’s decision and, if warranted, set it aside.

The standard of review is deferential. The question is not whether the agency made the best possible decision, but whether the decision was “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law.”¹⁵ You win by showing the agency ignored relevant evidence, failed to consider important factors, or reached a conclusion that cannot be squared with the record. You also need standing, meaning a concrete injury caused by the agency action that a favorable ruling would remedy, and you generally must exhaust available administrative appeals before going to court. APA review is the primary tool for challenging denied Social Security disability claims, immigration decisions, environmental permit disputes, and regulatory enforcement actions.

Federal Employees Alleging Discrimination

Federal employees who experience workplace discrimination based on race, sex, disability, age, religion, or another protected characteristic have a separate pathway. It does not start with a lawsuit. You must contact an Equal Employment Opportunity counselor at your agency within 45 days of the discriminatory event.¹⁶ That 45-day window is unforgiving, and many federal employees lose their claims simply because they didn’t know it existed.

After counseling, the process moves through a formal complaint, an investigation, and a potential hearing before an EEOC administrative judge. Only after exhausting these steps can a federal employee file suit in federal district court. The full path from initial contact to courtroom can take years, and skipping any step means dismissal.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 U.S. Code 1346 – United States as Defendant
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 U.S. Code 2680 – Exceptions
3
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 U.S. Code 2674 – Liability of United States
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 U.S. Code 2402 – Jury Trial in Actions Against United States
5
Justia Law. Feres v. United States, 340 U.S. 135 (1950)
6
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 10 U.S. Code 2733a – Medical Malpractice Claims by Members of the Uniformed Services
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Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 U.S. Code 2675 – Disposition by Federal Agency as Prerequisite; Evidence
8
General Services Administration. Claim for Damage, Injury, or Death
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eCFR. 28 CFR 14.2 – Administrative Claim; When Presented
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Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 U.S. Code 2401 – Time for Commencing Action Against United States
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Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 U.S. Code 1402 – United States as Defendant
12
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 U.S. Code 2678 – Attorney Fees; Penalty
13
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 U.S. Code 1491 – Claims Against United States Generally
14
Supreme Court of the United States. Egbert v. Boule, No. 21-147 (2022)
15
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 5 U.S. Code 706 – Scope of Review
16
U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Overview of Federal Sector EEO Complaint Process