Legal · Philterd

FRCP 5.2 Federal Civil Filing Redaction

Redact federal civil filings per FRCP 5.2 — last 4 of SSN/TIN/account, year-only birthdates, minor names to initials.

View policy → Download JSON → View source on GitHub

v1.0.0 Updated 2026-05-22 Philter >=3.0.0 By Philterd

FRCP 5.2federal civilcourt filingsprivacyPII

The policy

The full rule-5-2-federal-civil.json file — the same content you’d get by downloading. Copy any part of it, or use the buttons in the hero to grab the whole file.

{
  "name": "rule-5-2-federal-civil",
  "config": {
    "splitting": {
      "enabled": false,
      "threshold": 4000
    }
  },
  "ignored": [],
  "identifiers": {
    "ssn": {
      "ssnFilterStrategies": [
        {"strategy": "MASK", "maskCharacter": "x", "maskLength": "SAME", "leaveCharacters": 4}
      ]
    },
    "date": {
      "onlyValidDates": true,
      "dateFilterStrategies": [
        {"strategy": "TRUNCATE", "truncateDigits": 4, "redactionFormat": "%Y", "conditions": "context == \"birth\""}
      ]
    },
    "personsName": {
      "personsFilterStrategies": [
        {"strategy": "ABBREVIATE", "abbreviateFormat": "INITIALS", "conditions": "context == \"minor\""}
      ]
    },
    "identifiers": [
      {
        "id": "tin",
        "pattern": "\\b\\d{2}[-\\s]?\\d{7}\\b",
        "identifierFilterStrategies": [
          {"strategy": "MASK", "maskCharacter": "x", "maskLength": "SAME", "leaveCharacters": 4}
        ]
      },
      {
        "id": "financial-account",
        "pattern": "\\b(?:ACCT|ACCOUNT)[\\s:#]*\\d{6,}\\b",
        "caseSensitive": false,
        "identifierFilterStrategies": [
          {"strategy": "MASK", "maskCharacter": "x", "maskLength": "SAME", "leaveCharacters": 4}
        ]
      }
    ]
  }
}

Example

Input

Plaintiff Jane Doe (SSN 123-45-6789, born 1985-04-12) for account 1234567890. Minor child: Charles Doe.

Output

Plaintiff Jane Doe (SSN xxxxxxx6789, born 1985) for account xxxxxx7890. Minor child: C.D.

Entities this policy acts on

SSNTINACCOUNTBIRTHDATEMINOR_NAME

What this policy does

Implements the privacy-protection requirements of Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 5.2, which governs documents filed in U.S. district courts in civil matters. The rule requires that filings include only:

Original PII	Permitted in filing
Social Security number	last 4 digits
Taxpayer identification number	last 4 digits
Date of birth	year only
Name of a minor	initials only
Financial account number	last 4 digits

This policy is the federal-civil sibling of rule-9037-bankruptcy (which covers FRBP 9037 for bankruptcy filings). The redaction rules are identical between the two; the difference is which courts they apply in. Use this policy for federal district court civil matters; use the 9037 policy for bankruptcy.

This policy enforces those rules automatically:

SSNs and TINs — masked to last 4 (e.g., xxxxxxx6789).
Financial account numbers — masked to last 4. The regex matches ACCT 1234567890, Account: 1234567890, etc.
Birthdates — truncated to the 4-digit year. The context == "birth" condition only triggers on dates associated with a birth (DOB, “born”, etc.) — other dates in the filing (hearings, transaction dates) pass through.
Minors’ names — replaced with initials. The context == "minor" condition relies on Philter detecting minor-related context (e.g., “minor child”, “the minor”, “juvenile”). For high-precision deployments, also configure a custom dictionary of known minor names.

When to use this

Civil complaints and answers
Motions and supporting declarations filed with personal information from parties, witnesses, or third parties
Discovery responses being filed with the court (note: most discovery is served between parties and not filed; only filed discovery is in scope)
Trial and pretrial submissions that include the protected categories
Any document filed in a U.S. district court civil case that originated outside the court system

Specialized federal proceedings have their own rules that supersede FRCP 5.2:

Bankruptcy — use rule-9037-bankruptcy instead.
Criminal — Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 49.1 (similar but not identical scope).
Immigration / administrative — court-specific rules.

When to customize

Account number format. The default \bACCT[\s:#]*\d{6,}\b is illustrative. Replace with the specific patterns your case management system uses.
TIN format. The default matches the XX-XXXXXXX EIN format. ITINs follow 9XX-XX-XXXX and are caught by the SSN filter (since they share the SSN format).
Minor detection. If your filings have a structured field for minor names, add a custom section filter to redact the entire section content.
Per-rule overrides. FRCP 5.2(d) allows filing unredacted documents under seal with court permission. This policy assumes you want full redaction — if you’re preparing a filing for the protected order, use a less aggressive variant or pass through unmodified.
Court-specific local rules. Many district courts have local rules that supplement FRCP 5.2 (e.g., redacting witness home addresses, redacting alien-registration numbers in immigration-related matters). Layer those on top of this baseline.

Compliance notes

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 5.2 has been in effect since December 1, 2007. It applies to all documents filed with the U.S. district courts in civil matters.
This policy implements only the privacy-protection redactions required by FRCP 5.2(a). It does not handle the additional sealing or restricted-access provisions of FRCP 5.2(d) (motion to file under seal) or 5.2(e) (additional protections by court order).
FRCP 5.2(b) provides several exemptions — the redaction requirements do not apply to financial-account numbers identifying the property allegedly subject to forfeiture, the record of an administrative or agency proceeding, the official record of a state-court proceeding, the record of a court or tribunal if not subject to the privacy-protection rule, or filings covered by 5.2(c) (Social Security or immigration-related cases). Configure exemption handling in your filing workflow; this policy does not automatically detect those contexts.
Attorneys remain responsible for the accuracy of their filings. This policy is a tool to reduce manual redaction work, not a substitute for attorney review.

References

Use this policy

Download and load into your running Philter instance:

# Download the policy
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/philterd/pii-redaction-policies/main/policies/philterd/legal/rule-5-2-federal-civil.json

# Upload to your Philter instance
curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/api/policies \
     -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
     --data @rule-5-2-federal-civil.json

# Redact text using the policy
curl http://localhost:8080/api/filter?p=rule-5-2-federal-civil \
     --data "your text here" \
     -H "Content-Type: text/plain"

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