siding with civil-rights entities including Bay Area Legal Aid and the Family Violence Appellate Project<\/a>. In 2024, they had petitioned the high court to disentangle a county-by-county patchwork of policies that selectively permitted electronic transcripts while grappling with a disputed shortage of official court reporters across the state.<\/p>\nSuperior Courts in Santa Clara, Contra Costa, Los Angeles and San Diego counties were the named respondents in the litigation. As the litigation was forming, the first three counties instituted local policies increasing the allowance for electronic recordings, but critics said they entailed softly-defined thresholds like involving \u201cfundamental rights\u201d and needing expediency in the \u201cinterests of justice,\u201d issues they pointed out might arise in the middle of a proceeding after a court reporter has been precluded.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen faced with a court\u2019s inability to provide an official court reporter, an indigent litigant generally has two options. The litigant may accept a continuance of the hearing, or the litigant may choose to go forward without a way to obtain an official verbatim record of the proceedings,\u201d Guerrero wrote, adding that \u201cboth options are unpalatable.\u201d<\/p>\n
She also co-signed a central concern by the petitioners about how someone in this scenario could see their legal standing imperiled if they opted against a delay:\u00a0\u201cGoing forward without a means to create an official verbatim record renders many trial court errors unreviewable, and hence uncorrectable, on appeal.\u201d<\/p>\n
The state Supreme Court decision also dispensed with any notion that a means test would be needed to sort out who qualified for the benefit, stating in a footnote, \u201cwe do not suggest some absolute standard of indigency. Instead, the right to proceed \u2026 extends to any litigant who cannot reasonably afford the costs necessary to access the judicial process.\u201d<\/p>\n
The court\u2019s ruling was hailed by groups who provide legal services for low-income clients and those experiencing family violence, who note that delays can often be daunting in matters involving restraining orders, child custody and visitation orders, and spousal and child support orders.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday\u2019s decision is a major victory in the fight for equal access to justice for all litigants, regardless of financial means,\u201d Jennafer Dorfman Wagner, director of programs for the Family Violence Appellate Project, said in a statement Monday.<\/p>\n
Sonya Winner, a senior counsel with the firm Covington & Burling LLP who argued for the petitioners in front of the Supreme Court, said in a statement, \u201cBy depriving low-income litigants of access to verbatim recording, our judicial system has been relegating them to second-class status. We are pleased that the court has stepped in to correct this situation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Court reporters\u2014 not to be confused with journalists who cover court matters \u2014 had objected to the state Supreme Court petition, but not to oppose those whose rights were being compromised by the diminished access to official court transcripts. Both local and statewide unions have long objected to the characterization of court reporter availability, calling any shortage an outcome of the courts\u2019 inability and unwillingness to sufficiently hire and retain court reporters, only for the courts to turn around and seek a cheaper and less labor-involved avenue.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor years, county courts have spread the narrative that there aren\u2019t enough court reporters in order to justify replacing us with electronic recording,\u201d Shanna Gray, president of the Los Angeles County Court Reporters Association, said in a statement Monday.<\/p>\n
Michelle Caldwell, a Santa Clara County-based court reporter who serves as president of the statewide California Court Reporters Association, warned that in seemingly eliminating a system of haves and have-nots when it comes being able to afford to hire a private court reporter, a similar binary has sprung up in its place: Those who have trusted tried-and-true professional transcripts versus those who have a less-reliable chronicle devoid of the full context of a courtroom proceeding.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are of course concerned about any sort of two-tiered system that applies differently to those who have means and those who don\u2019t,\u201d Caldwell said in an interview.<\/p>\n
Scott Kronland, a partner with the firm Altshuler Berzon LLP and who argued for CCRA and other court reporter associations to the state Supreme Court, said pressure should now be on the courts to hire enough court reporters to make electronic recordings unnecessary. They note that between 2021 and 2025, newly licensed court reporters in the state increased 900% from 37 to 359, thanks in large part to adoptions of reciprocity in licensing, remote reporting and voice writing programs.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday\u2019s decision should increase job opportunities for court reporters,\u201d Kronland said in a statement. \u201cElectronic recording is an inferior method that may be used only if court reporters are unavailable. Court reporter schools are full and have waiting lists. Superior courts must hire those court reporters.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Santa Clara County Superior Court said Monday it \u201cwill carefully assess the opinion\u2019s implications for that order and the Court\u2019s related procedures.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe court remains committed to providing meaningful and equitable access to justice, including access to an official verbatim record of proceedings for litigants who cannot afford a private court reporter,\u201d the court said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Brenda Star Adams, director of litigation for Bay Area Legal Aid, said she is sympathetic to the competing perspectives behind the court reporter availability dispute, but highlighted another footnote in the ruling: \u201cIt is sufficient to note that a verbatim record created by electronic recording is better than no record at all.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat brings the focus back to the people that this is about. People who are just trying to access the justice system, and can\u2019t afford to pay,\u201d Adams said Monday. \u201cThe court in its decision made it pretty clear, by acknowledging that there is some dispute about the cause of the issue, but that it doesn\u2019t matter because it\u2019s not these people\u2019s fault.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN FRANCISCO \u2014 California\u2019s highest court has ruled that electronic audio transcripts must be made available to indigent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":429290,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[170823,2081,42697,156349,170824,1846,975,12952,101,103,102,104,106,105,14398,71607],"class_list":["post-429289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-bay-area-legal-aid","tag-california-supreme-court","tag-court-reporter","tag-electronic-recording","tag-family-violence-appellate-project","tag-lawsuit","tag-opinion","tag-petition","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news","tag-shortage","tag-writ"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=429289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/429289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/429290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=429289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=429289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=429289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}