by Marilyn Odendahl, The Indiana Citizen
December 26, 2024
One Indiana lawmaker is expecting the Indiana General Assembly to step back this coming session from continually approving requests for more trial court judges and instead start shifting judicial resources from slower courts to busier courts.
Rep. Chris Jeter, R-Fishers, said he anticipates legislators will insert language into the biennial budget that will mandate that the Statehouse take a look at the Indiana court system as a whole when considering bills for new judges and magistrate judges. The new language, he said, will probably require a judgeship to be closed somewhere in the state before a new judgeship is opened.
“I do think that we have gotten in the habit of adding,” Jeter said. “All we’ve done over the last decade is add judges, add judges, but nobody’s ever looked to see, are there some counties that maybe we should take them away from?”
The Fishers Republican, who chaired the Interim Study Committee on the Courts and the Judiciary and will chair the House Judiciary Committee, said the data provided in the Indiana Trial Courts Weighted Caseload Report supports reallocation of existing resources.
According to the 2023 weighted caseload report, the most recent analysis available, Indiana has enough trial court judges overall to handle the demands of the docket, but the problem seems to be the distribution of those judicial resources.
Identifying a utilization rate of 1.0 as indicating a county has enough judicial officers to meet its needs, the 2023 report calculated Indiana’s utilization rate at 0.98. However, a closer look at the individual counties shows utilization rate swings between Hamilton County’s 1.34—the most severe in the state—and Union County’s 0.35—the lowest in the state.
Jeter said he does not believe judges in the state are “sitting around twiddling their thumbs doing nothing,” and he realizes that judges in some rural counties are presiding over a wide range of cases from criminal and family to probate and commercial. Yet he said the legislature has to look at the data.
“I think that what we’ve decided is we don’t need to create any more new judges,” Jeter said. “We have the right number of judges in the state. We just need to get them in the areas that are growing or get them in the areas where the population is.”
Rep. Victoria Garcia Wilburn, D-Fishers, who served on the interim study committee and will be the ranking minority member of the House Judiciary Committee, pointed out in a statement to The Indiana Citizen that the members of the interim committee did recommend that judgeships from less busy county trial courts be moved to counties with busier trial courts.
However, she noted the General Assembly might need to do more to address the issue.
“It’s critical that we make sure we are maximizing the working time of judges and relieve the burden on high-need counties like Hamilton County,” Garcia Wilburn said in her statement. “At the same time, we need to consider that reallocation may not be a long-term solution and start to explore other thoughtful solutions.”
Cannot continue adding judges
Along with recommending reallocation, the interim study committee advised the legislature to provide additional judges and magistrate judges to Elkhart, Hamilton, Lawrence and Vigo county courts. They rejected a request from Spencer County for a magistrate judge because that court had a low weighted caseload utilization rate of 0.64.
Hamilton County requested two new Superior Courts, two new judges and two new magistrate judges. Jeter said he plans to carry the bill that would give Hamilton County the additional judicial resources it wants.
Any judgeship approved by the legislature in the 2025 session will probably not be new, Jeter said, but rather be created by closing a judgeship in another county. The reallocation will be done in a “fair and humane manner,” he said, by allowing judges in positions or courts targeted for elimination to finish their elected terms before being removed.
Consequently, the state’s overall utilization rate could increase because of that lag, but the rate will self-correct as sitting judges in the less busy counties end their tenures on the bench and the judgeships are closed, he said.
The cost of each new judgeship approved by the legislature is covered by taxpayers. A fiscal analysis by the Legislative Services Agency estimated the yearly salary and benefits for a judge and a magistrate judge in 2024 totaled $230,961 and $187,759, respectively.
Indiana Chief Justice Loretta Rush served on the interim study committee and, according to a spokeswoman, will work with lawmakers on a possible reallocation of trial court judges. However, Kathryn Dolan, Indiana Supreme Court chief public information officer, said Rush does not support reducing the number of judges statewide.
“Chief Justice Rush is supportive of working with the legislature on the best way to allocate judges to meet judicial needs throughout the state,” Dolan said. “A weighted caseload study has been conducted and it shows that Indiana has about the right number of judges but not necessarily in the right location. Population shifts and caseload changes affect the need for judicial officers in specific areas of the state.”
Although some counties may lose judges and courts through reallocation, Jeter does not anticipate lawmakers will fight hard against it. He acknowledged some legislators might need some convincing, but the idea of shifting judicial resources to the high-need counties has been “floating out there” for some time.
“I think there has been an acknowledgement from both chambers that this is a change we need to make,” Jeter said. “It’s not going to be easy, but I think everybody acknowledges that we need to take the tough medicine and we need to start looking harder and not just keep adding, adding, adding, adding, adding.”
