Editing United States district court (section)

{{Short description|Trial court of the U.S. federal judiciary}}
{{About|the district courts of the U.S. federal judicial system|the district courts of various U.S. states' judicial systems|Courts of the United States#Courts by state of the United States}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=August 2020}}
[[File:US Court of Appeals and District Court map.svg|thumb|upright=1.8|right|Map of the boundaries of the United States district courts within each of the 13 circuits of the [[United States courts of appeals]]. All district courts lie within the boundary of a single jurisdiction, usually in [[U.S. state|a state]] (heavier lines). Some states have more than one district court (dotted lines denote those jurisdictions)]]
{{Politics of the United States}}

The '''United States district courts''' are the [[trial court]]s of the [[United States federal judiciary|U.S. federal judiciary]].  There is one district court for each [[United States federal judicial district|federal judicial district]].  Each district covers one [[U.S. state]] or a portion of a state. There is at least one [[List of United States federal courthouses|federal courthouse]] in each district, and many districts have more than one. District court decisions are appealed to the [[United States courts of appeals|U.S. court of appeals]] for the circuit in which they reside, except for certain specialized cases that are appealed to the [[United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit|U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit]] or directly to the [[Supreme Court of the United States|U.S. Supreme Court]].

District courts are courts of [[common law|law]], [[Court of equity|equity]], and [[Admiralty court|admiralty]], and can hear both [[Civil law (common law)|civil]] and [[Criminal law|criminal]] cases. But unlike [[State court (United States)|U.S. state courts]], federal district courts are courts of [[limited jurisdiction]], and can only hear cases that involve disputes between [[diversity jurisdiction|residents of different states]], [[federal question jurisdiction|questions of federal law]], or federal crimes.