Hundreds of thousands of California court proceedings are held without a precise record of what happened thanks to a shortage of court reporters, the Los Angeles Times reports. State court officials warned this poses a growing "constitutional crisis," compounded by the state's ban on electronic recordings in certain types of hearings even when a reporter isn't available. Courts have tried to triage the problem by reserving available court reporters for the most important cases, such as felony trials. But other critically important proceedings — such as for domestic violence restraining orders and child custody disputes — routinely are going unrecorded. On a daily basis, litigants are told they can either hire their own reporters — for hundreds or even thousands of dollars per hearing — or simply go without a record.
The result, officials and advocates agree, is that poorer Californians have less access to justice. “It is absolutely an access to justice issue,” said Cory Hernandez, senior managing attorney for the Family Violence Appellate Project, which regularly confronts the issue in domestic violence cases. “Not having court reporters is disproportionately impacting women, and women of color in particular.” Last year, 332,000 hearings occurred without a court reporter or an electronic recording device in Los Angeles County Superior Court alone. Diana Van Dyke, a public court reporter for decades and a board member of the Los Angeles County Court Reporters Association, blamed judicial system mismanagement for driving employees into the private sector — starting with steep reporter layoffs during an economic downturn more than a decade ago. David W. Slayton, the L.A. County Superior Court’s executive officer, said the courts are doing “everything in our power” to compete, including by offering annual salaries of $130,000, good benefits, additional fees for transcription services and $50,000 signing bonuses. It just isn’t working, Slayton said, in part because private sector reporters can choose when and where they work, sometimes work remotely, pick the cases they cover, and still make thousands of dollars a day. Something has to change, he said — and soon, given that about 70% of public reporters in the L.A. County Superior Court system are eligible for retirement. “We need to come together … and figure out a way to solve this,” Slayton said. “We are pleading for a solution.”