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Federal Rules Amendments Effective December 1, 2026: A Practitioner's Guide

On April 8, 2026, the Chief Justice transmitted a short package of federal rules amendments to Congress. If Congress takes no action, the amendments take effect on December 1, 2026. They will apply to proceedings filed on or after that date, and to pending cases where they can fairly apply. See 28 U.S.C. § 2074(a).

This year’s package is unusually thin. It also has an unusual story behind it. Six weeks before transmittal, the Standing Committee asked the Court to pull the proposed amendments to Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure 29 and 32 and the Appendix on Length Limits. The Court agreed. What remains is a single revised appellate form, several bankruptcy amendments, one new bankruptcy rule, and one change to the Federal Rules of Evidence.

This article walks through each amendment in the order practitioners will encounter it. The 2027 editions of the Michigan Legal Publishing Federal Rules will reflect every change. Those editions release this November.

The Withdrawn Rule 29 Amicus Package

For most of 2025, the headline proposal was a major rewrite of Rule 29, which governs amicus curiae briefs. The proposal would have done a lot. It would have restructured the rule. It would have added a statement of purpose for amicus briefs. It would have expanded disclosure requirements about the amicus’s history, identity, and ties to parties and nonparties. It would have required disclosure of any nonparty contribution over $100 earmarked for a brief. And it would have replaced the existing fractional length limit with a hard 6,500-word ceiling on initial-stage briefs. Conforming changes to Rule 32 and the Appendix on Length Limits travelled with it.

The proposal drew heavy public comment. The most contested feature required disclosure of any contribution over $100 from any “member” who joined the amicus organization within the past twelve months. The provision was meant to prevent litigants from buying short-term memberships in advocacy groups to fund briefs without disclosure. Opponents argued that the rule would chill associational rights protected by the First Amendment under Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta, 594 U.S. 595 (2021), and NAACP v. Alabama ex rel. Patterson, 357 U.S. 449 (1958).

On March 10, 2026, the chairs of the Standing Committee and the Appellate Rules Committee wrote to the Court asking that the entire Rule 29 package be withdrawn, including the conforming changes to Rule 32 and the Length Limits Appendix. The Court agreed. The April 8 transmittal contained no Rule 29 amendment.

For practitioners, the result is the simplest possible one. The rules on amicus briefs are unchanged. The text in force on November 30, 2026 will be the text in force on December 1. Litigants filing amicus briefs in 2027 should consult the same provisions they used in 2025.

The Advisory Committee on Appellate Rules met again on April 16, 2026 and voted 5 to 1 to drop the contested membership-disclosure provision from any future draft. A revised Rule 29 proposal will probably come back through the rulemaking process. It will not be in force in 2027.

Pulling an entire amendment package after Judicial Conference approval, but before transmittal to Congress, is rare. It happens. But it is the exception, not the rule. The current Rule 29 framework, which already requires disclosure of authorship, party contributions, and identified earmarked contributions, remains the federal standard.

Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure: The New Form 4

Only one change made it into the final appellate package: a revised Form 4.

Form 4 is the affidavit attached to a motion to proceed in forma pauperis on appeal. The current form runs four pages. It includes a long set of detailed financial questions, including several about a spouse’s income and assets. Those spousal questions were added in 1998, after the Prison Litigation Reform Act, and they have drawn steady criticism for asking more than the statute requires.

The new form is two pages. It asks eight numbered questions:

  1. Monthly take-home pay
  2. Monthly income from other sources
  3. Monthly housing costs
  4. Monthly costs for other necessary expenses
  5. Total value of assets
  6. Total debt
  7. Number of people supported
  8. Whether the applicant receives SNAP, Medicaid, or SSI

The signature block is still an affidavit under penalty of perjury. Prisoners still have to attach a certified statement of their institutional accounts for the past six months.

For pro bono and assigned counsel handling indigent appeals, the change is welcome and easy to use. Beginning December 1, 2026, the form lines up better with what courts of appeals actually need to know: whether the applicant can pay the filing fees, and whether there is a non-frivolous issue on appeal.

For students, Form 4 is a useful reminder that the federal rules include forms as well as rule text. The forms go through the same Rules Enabling Act process, and they carry the same legal weight.

Federal Rules of Bankruptcy Procedure

Most of the substantive work in this cycle is in the bankruptcy rules. The amendments fall into three groups. Each one addresses a real, recurring practical problem.

Rules 1007, 5009, and 9006: The Financial Management Course

Section 727(a)(11) of the Bankruptcy Code says that an individual Chapter 7 debtor cannot get a discharge unless he completes a course in personal financial management. Section 1328(g)(1) imposes the same requirement in Chapter 13. The course is short. The rule about proving completion has been a recurring trap for unrepresented debtors. Cases close without discharge, sometimes years into a Chapter 13 plan, because a debtor missed a deadline he did not know existed.

The amendments to Rules 1007, 5009, and 9006 fix this in three coordinated steps.

Rule 1007(c) drops the deadline for filing the certificate of course completion. The certificate is still required. The deadline against which it had to be filed is gone.

Rule 5009 is amended to require the clerk to send the debtor two reminder notices. One comes earlier in the case. One comes later. Each one tells the debtor to take the course and file the certificate of completion.

Rule 9006 is amended to remove references to the now-eliminated deadline. This is housekeeping. Rule 9006 governs computing and extending time. Its language has to match what Rule 1007 says.

The practical effect is straightforward. An individual debtor who took the course, but who failed to file the certificate of completion in time, will not lose his discharge for that reason alone. Two scheduled reminders give him a much better chance of getting it right. Trustees and debtor’s counsel should still file the certificate as a matter of routine. The discipline of filing it early has not changed. What has changed is the cost of error.

Rule 3018: Oral Acceptance of a Plan

Rule 3018 governs acceptance or rejection of a plan in Chapter 9 and Chapter 11 cases. It currently requires a written ballot. The amendment lets a court also treat a statement on the record as an acceptance. The statement can come from an individual creditor (who may appear pro se) or from the creditor’s attorney or authorized agent.

The change is narrower than it might look. Section 1126 of the Bankruptcy Code, which governs Chapter 11 plan voting, is unchanged. The amendment is a procedural authorization. It is not a substantive shift. It allows a bankruptcy court to credit, as an acceptance, a statement that today must be reduced to a written ballot. In small cases, including subchapter V cases with one or two main creditors, the efficiency is real.

Several cautions are in order. The rule lets the court treat an oral statement as an acceptance. It does not require the court to do that. A court can still insist on written ballots in any case. The amendment also does not change disclosure statement approval or the formal solicitation procedures of Rule 3017. Counsel should make a clear record at every hearing. An offhand comment by counsel should not become an “acceptance” by accident.

Rules 9014, 9017, and New Rule 7043: Remote Testimony

The third bankruptcy amendment is the most consequential one. It rewrites the framework for remote witness testimony in bankruptcy.

Some background. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 43(a) provides:

At trial, the witnesses’ testimony must be taken in open court unless a federal statute, the Federal Rules of Evidence, these rules, or other rules adopted by the Supreme Court provide otherwise. For good cause in compelling circumstances and with appropriate safeguards, the court may permit testimony in open court by contemporaneous transmission from a different location.

Until now, current Bankruptcy Rule 9017 made Civil Rule 43 generally applicable in bankruptcy cases. Bankruptcy Rule 9014, which governs contested matters, did the same thing by reference.

The “good cause in compelling circumstances” standard is a high bar. The pandemic taught the bankruptcy bar, and the bench, that remote testimony in routine contested matters often serves the parties and the court better than insisting on in-person appearance. But under the existing rule, a court permitting remote testimony in something like a contested motion for relief from stay had to find compelling circumstances. That phrase was originally written for trials in district court.

The amendments draw a line that the existing rules did not draw. They distinguish between adversary proceedings and contested matters.

New Rule 7043 is a new rule in Part VII of the Bankruptcy Rules. It makes Civil Rule 43 applicable to adversary proceedings. The “good cause in compelling circumstances and with appropriate safeguards” standard continues to govern remote testimony in adversary proceedings, which are the proceedings most like civil trials in district court.

Amended Rule 9014 changes the standard for contested matters. The court may now permit remote witness testimony “for cause and with appropriate safeguards.” The phrase “compelling circumstances” is dropped. Cause is still required. Safeguards are still required. What is no longer required is a showing of compelling circumstances.

Amended Rule 9017 is the conforming change. Rule 7043 now picks up Civil Rule 43 for adversary proceedings. Rule 9014 now states its own standard for contested matters. Rule 9017’s general adoption of Civil Rule 43 is therefore removed.

The effect is to give bankruptcy courts more flexibility in contested matters, which are the bread and butter of a bankruptcy docket. The traditional standard stays in place for adversary proceedings, where the stakes look more like civil litigation. Whether the standard for contested matters has been substantially loosened or merely clarified is a question that practice will answer. “Cause” is itself a real requirement. The rule still demands “appropriate safeguards.” Courts must still protect against the risks of remote testimony, including witness coaching, document handling, and credibility assessment.

Counsel should expect that motions for remote testimony in contested matters will be granted more readily after December 1. Counsel should not assume they will be granted as a matter of course. The amended rule preserves judicial discretion. It changes the threshold. It does not eliminate it.

Federal Rules of Evidence: Rule 801(d)(1)(A)

The amendment to Rule 801(d)(1)(A) is short. Its effects will be substantial.

The current rule says that a prior statement by a testifying witness is “not hearsay” (meaning admissible substantively, not just for impeachment) only if the statement “is inconsistent with the declarant’s testimony and was given under penalty of perjury at a trial, hearing, or other proceeding or in a deposition.” The bolded language is the oath requirement. It has been part of the rule since 1975, when Congress added it to the version the Court submitted.

The amendment removes the oath requirement. Under the amended rule, a prior inconsistent statement by a declarant-witness who testifies and is subject to cross-examination is admissible substantively, regardless of whether the prior statement was made under oath at a formal proceeding.

The Committee’s reasoning is straightforward. The hearsay rule’s traditional concerns are the inability to test the witness for demeanor, sincerity, perception, memory, and articulation. Those concerns are addressed when the declarant takes the stand and is cross-examined. The fact-finder can watch the witness deny or try to explain away the inconsistency.

A few important points about how this works in practice.

The amendment governs admissibility, not sufficiency. Whether a prior inconsistent statement, by itself, can support a conviction or a verdict is a separate question. The rule does not address it.

Rule 403 still applies. A prior inconsistent statement that is more prejudicial than probative, for example because of doubts about whether the statement was actually made, can still be excluded.

Rule 613(b) is unchanged. Extrinsic evidence of a witness’s prior inconsistent statement still requires that the witness have an opportunity to explain or deny it.

The limiting instruction goes away. Trial courts have long had to give the jury a limiting instruction when a prior inconsistent statement was admitted but had not been made under oath. The instruction told the jury to consider the statement only as bearing on the witness’s credibility, and not as substantive evidence. After December 1, 2026, the limiting instruction is not needed for prior inconsistent statements admitted under amended Rule 801(d)(1)(A).

For trial practitioners, this is the most consequential single change in the package. Police-interview statements, recorded interviews of witnesses by investigators, statements to reporters, and statements to friends and family that are later contradicted on the stand will all be substantively admissible if three conditions are met:

  1. The declarant testifies.
  2. The declarant is subject to cross-examination.
  3. The prior statement is inconsistent with the trial testimony.

Cross-examination is still required. That requirement should not be glossed over. But the formal, in-court, under-oath gateway disappears.

The amendment also matches what the Supreme Court itself proposed when the Federal Rules of Evidence were first adopted in the 1970s. The oath requirement was added in conference, against the Court’s recommendation. The Court has now prescribed what it originally proposed.

For students: the line between substantive and impeachment use of prior inconsistent statements has always been hard for jurors to grasp. It has been even harder for trial judges to police. The amendment removes the line.

Bankruptcy Rules 2007.1 and 3001: Technical Corrections

The Supreme Court package also includes technical, non-substantive corrections to Bankruptcy Rules 2007.1 and 3001. Both are conforming changes that follow the comprehensive restyling of the Bankruptcy Rules that took effect on December 1, 2024. Rule 2007.1 was updated to refer to a bulleted list (rather than a list of romanettes) that was reformatted during restyling. Rule 3001(c) was reordered with updated cross-references. Neither change alters substance. They are noted here for completeness.

When the Rules Take Effect

Under 28 U.S.C. § 2074(a), the amendments take effect on December 1, 2026, unless Congress acts before that date. Congress has not used its authority under § 2074(a) to reject or modify a Rules Enabling Act amendment in recent memory. There is no current sign that it plans to do so here. The practical assumption is that the amendments will take effect as transmitted.

Once effective, the amendments will govern proceedings filed on or after December 1, 2026. They will also apply to pending proceedings, including bankruptcy cases filed years earlier, “insofar as just and practicable.” That phrase is well-known. It generally means the new rule applies unless its application would cause an injustice or a real practical problem in a case that has already moved well past the point at which the new rule would have made a difference.

The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts maintains a Pending Rules and Forms Amendments page that tracks all amendments through the rulemaking process. The full Supreme Court rules package, with blackline redlines and committee notes, is also available for readers who want the underlying source materials.

Bottom Line

This cycle’s amendments are modest. The Court did not prescribe any new civil rule or any new criminal rule. The big appellate proposal was withdrawn. What remains is a simpler IFP form, a procedural fix that will save discharges for unrepresented bankruptcy debtors, a small efficiency in plan voting, a more workable framework for remote testimony, and a clearer rule on prior inconsistent statements.

A quiet rulemaking cycle is not an idle one. The federal rules are slow to change by design. Three years is the typical interval between proposing an amendment and its taking effect. Each rule that survives the process has been studied, published, opened for comment, redrafted, and approved at multiple levels before reaching the Supreme Court and then Congress. The Standing Committee’s willingness to pull a rule it had already approved is a sign that the process is doing its job.

Practitioners and students should fold the amendments into their practice and study starting December 1, 2026.

The 2027 editions of the Michigan Legal Publishing Federal Rules will reflect each change in the rule text and the committee notes:

This article describes the federal rules amendments transmitted to Congress on April 8, 2026, scheduled to take effect on December 1, 2026, absent congressional action. It is not legal advice. Always consult the current rule text and committee notes before relying on a rule in any particular matter.

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