To initiate a civil suit in federal court, a litigant submits a complaint "pleading" entitlement to legal relief. In a 2007 decision, Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly , and more forcefully in a 2009 decision, Ashcroft v. Iqbal , the U.S. Supreme Court heightened the standard for evaluating such pleadings. Although the extent of its impact has yet to be determined, the change appears to reduce the likelihood that plaintiffs' claims will survive the pleadings stage in federal courts, particularly in cases in which plaintiffs plan to rely on evidence discovered during litigation to bolster their claims. Bills pending in the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, the Open Access to Courts Act of 2009 ( H.R. 4115 ) and the Notice Pleading Restoration Act of 2009 ( S. 1504 ), aim to reverse the effects of the rulings. This report discusses the context and implications of the Twombly and Iqbal decisions and the pending bills. Standards and procedures governing complaints in federal civil suits are governed by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Although the Rules are promulgated by the U.S. Supreme Court pursuant to the Rules Enabling Act, Congress has ultimate authority over amendment of the Rules. Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 8(a)(2), a complaint in a civil case must contain a "short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief." A related rule, Rule 12(b)(6), enables a defendant to bring a motion to dismiss a plaintiff's claim for failure to satisfy the 8(a)(2) requirement—that is, failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted. If a court grants a defendant's Rule 12(b)(6) motion, the case will be dismissed and thus will not proceed. If a complaint survives the Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss, then the process of discovery and pre-trial motions begin. During the discovery phase, litigants may petition the court for subpoenas to access evidence from the other parties. With some exceptions, federal courts historically interpreted the Rule 8(a)(2) pleading requirement broadly and the corresponding Rule 12(b)(b) standard narrowly, meaning that complaints had to satisfy a relatively low bar in order to survive a motion to dismiss. The prevailing approach was articulated by the Supreme Court in Conley v. Gibson , a 1957 case: "[A] complaint should not be dismissed for failure to state a claim unless it appears beyond doubt that the plaintiff can prove no set of facts in support of his claim which would entitle him to relief." The Conley "no set of facts" approach is described as "notice pleading" or the "access principle." It requires that a complaint "give the defendant fair notice of what the ... claim is and the grounds upon which it rests" rather than requiring that allegations be fully developed at the pleading stage. It is contrasted with a "heightened pleading standard," under which a complaint must allege a minimum number or type of facts. In practice, the notice pleading approach meant that civil complaints were sufficient as long as they asserted a claim which, if proved, could lead to a winning legal judgment. No evaluation was made regarding whether the allegations were likely to be proven in the case. After the enactment of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure in 1938, Rule 8(a)(2) and Rule 12(b)(6) were interpreted as having adopted a notice pleading approach to remove barriers to civil litigation in federal courts. The Supreme Court summarized the notice pleading rationale in a case decided shortly after the enactment of the Rules: "Pleadings are intended to serve as a means of arriving at fair and just settlements of controversies between litigants" and thus "should not raise barriers which prevent the achievement of that end." In Conley , the Court likewise explained that "[t]he Federal Rules reject the approach that pleading is a game of skill in which one misstep by counsel may be decisive to the outcome and accept the principle that the purpose of pleading is to facilitate a proper decision on the merits." Although some lower federal courts departed from the notice pleading approach during the past few decades, the Supreme Court reaffirmed the approach in Leatherman v. Tarrant County Narcotics Intelligence & Coordination , a 1993 case, and again in Swierkiewicz v. Sorema N.A. , a 2002 case. In Swierkiewicz , a unanimous Court declined to apply a heightened pleading standard to an employment discrimination suit. It stated that such a heightened pleading standard would be "a result that 'must be obtained by the process of amending the Federal Rules, and not by judicial interpretation.'" Adhering to the Conley interpretation of Rule 8(a)(2) as having no "regard to whether a claim will succeed on the merits," the Court stated that "'[i]ndeed it may appear on the face of the pleadings that a recovery is very remote and unlikely but that is not the test." As mentioned, despite the Leatherman and Swierkiewicz rulings, some lower court opinions scaled back the "notice pleading" approach in recent decades, particularly in complex areas such as bankruptcy, antitrust, and civil rights. The shift has been described as a response to concerns regarding the cost and delay of litigation resulting from an increased number and complexity of federal civil cases. By carving out exceptions for allegations characterized as "mere conclusions" or "bare bones," and by declaring in some instances that the "no set of facts" language from Conley "has never been taken literally," lower courts arguably set the stage for the changes made in Twombly and Iqbal . In Bell Atlantic Cor p oration . v. Twombly , a 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court appeared to depart from the notice pleading approach for the first time in a decision that arguably applied to all federal civil cases. The plaintiffs in Twombly were a group of television and Internet subscribers. Filing a complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, they sued four "Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers," also known as "Baby Bells," alleging that the defendants had engaged in a conspiracy in violation of section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, 15 U.S.C. § 1. That section prohibits "a contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce[.]" To support their conspiracy allegation, the plaintiffs principally alleged facts intended to show that the defendants had engaged in "parallel conduct," that is, adjusted prices and taken other actions in a similar timeframe and manner. The defendants brought a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss the plaintiffs' complaint for failure to state a claim, and the district court granted the motion. It held that even if true, the facts alleging parallel conduct would constitute only one piece of evidence in the antitrust case, and would not, alone, constitute a sufficient basis on which to prove that the defendant companies had engaged in a conspiracy in violation of 15 U.S.C. § 1. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed, but the U.S. Supreme Court reversed again. Echoing the district court's reasoning, Justice Souter's opinion for the Court emphasized that the plaintiffs alleged no facts other than parallel conduct that would point to the existence of an unlawful conspiracy. The opinion states that "[t]he need at the pleading stage for allegations plausibly suggesting (not merely consistent with) [a violation of section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act] reflects the threshold requirement of Rule 8(a)(2) that the 'plain statement' possess enough heft to 'sho[w] that the pleader is entitled to relief.'" Thus, the Court held that to survive a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss, an antitrust complaint must provide "enough factual matter (taken as true) to suggest that an agreement was made." Mirroring language rulings in which lower courts had similarly adopted narrow interpretations of the Rule 8(a)(2) pleading standard in antitrust cases, the Court also suggested that a "naked" allegation of conspiracy, without sufficient accompanying facts, would not survive a Rule 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss. Thus, the Supreme Court appeared to require a heightened pleading standard for the Rule 12(b)(6) motion, at least as applied to the antitrust claims. Speaking more broadly, the Court rejected the literal reading of the "no set of facts" language from Conley , holding that the phrase had "earned its retirement." Other language in the opinion created doubt as to whether the Court intended a heightened pleading standard or appeared at least to limit the scope of the holding. For example, the Court clarified that "[a]sking for plausible grounds to infer an agreement does not impose a probability requirement at the pleading stage; it simply calls for enough fact to raise a reasonable expectation that discovery will reveal evidence of illegal agreement." Likewise, in a footnote, the Court cited the 1993 and 2002 cases in which the Court explicitly reaffirmed Conley and rejected a "heightened pleading standard." In addition, shortly after Twombly , the Court issued an opinion in which it appeared to adopt a narrow view of the decision. In dissent in Twombly , Justice Stevens argued against what he perceived as the Court's decision to upend the long-standing notice pleading approach. "If Conley 's 'no set of facts' language is to be interred," he wrote, "let it not be without a eulogy." He then discussed the historical importance of notice pleading, for example as a vehicle by which litigants enforced civil rights laws. Justice Stevens also disputed the majority's practical arguments regarding the increasing cost of litigation. He argued that cases have long been allowed to proceed until "at least some sort of response" was obtained from defendants, with relatively little cost or delay.