No record, no appeal: California must close its court reporting gap

Capitol Weekly welcomes Opinions on California public policy or politics. Please read our guidelines for opinion pieces before submitting an Op-Ed. Submissions that do not adhere to our guidelines will not be considered for publication. 

OPINION — Every court case in California is supposed to leave behind a record of what was said. For a growing number of Californians, it doesn’t.

The culprit is a growing shortage of stenographers in courtrooms across the state, which has been deemed by many legal advocates as a constitutional crisis.

The Judicial Council reports that over 2 million family law, probate and civil hearings have proceeded without a verbatim record between April 2023 and March 2026, which represents 72% of these types of proceedings statewide. 

For decades, stenographers have kept our courtrooms running, but after years of retirements and sluggish recruitment efforts, California courts still need 458 additional full-time reporters to meet current demand. The recruitment pipeline isn’t closing the gap in time for the litigants who need a record today.

The California Supreme Court recently ruled in agreement. In Family Violence Appellate Project v. Superior Courts of California, the Court observed that the promise of a court reporter for those who cannot pay private rates “has proven illusory.” The justices unanimously held that when an indigent litigant asks for an official verbatim record and no official stenographic reporter is available, the court must find a way to provide a record, including via unmanned electronic recording. 

However, the decision was drafted narrowly, covering only four counties and leaving open the questions of who qualifies and how courts should decide when a reporter is unavailable. 

This ruling, while an important step in the right direction for California, is a limited solution for a narrow set of litigants. It’s time for the legislature to act to ensure every Californian has full access to the record.

Two bills I carried this past legislative session point toward that goal. Both aim to modernize our court system and give its participants the tools they need to ensure due process.

Assembly Bill 2290 allows a deposition officer to securely send a certified transcript to an attorney electronically, when the attorney asks, instead of requiring a sealed paper copy, while safeguarding against loss or tampering. Lawyers and clients increasingly do not want boxes of paper, and letting them choose saves time, postage and paper. No drama, just a law that works the way people actually work today.

That measure, which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed in September after it unanimously passed both houses, is an important step forward in modernizing the court system. 

The bigger and more critical move is revisiting Assembly Bill 1189, which would have built a certification pathway for digital court reporters and voice writers. 

The answer to the stenographer shortage is not to leave courtrooms unrecorded or simply to hand the job to an unattended machine in limited cases. It is to widen the pool of qualified people who can create and safeguard the record.

Trained, certified digital reporters and voice writers already perform this task in other states. California should follow suit to certify them, hold them to the same standards of accuracy and record protection, and allow these professionals to work alongside stenographers, who while diminishing in numbers are indispensable to the court system and should be protected in any new measure.

The bill didn’t clear the Legislature before the deadline, and I will not be here to carry it as my term ends.  

So here is my ask of the next Legislature: Finish the job. 

Sponsor a new certification bill for digital reporters and voice writers. Pair it with recruitment and retention support for stenographers, and treat the Supreme Court’s decision as a floor, not a ceiling.

Behind all those millions of cases that have gone are real people with real problems: a distressed parent seeking a restraining order, a grandmother fighting over custody, a survivor of domestic abuse turning to the courts for protection. None of them can appeal a bad ruling without a court reporter-produced transcript, and many cannot afford a private reporter to cover their case.

It’s the legislature’s turn to ensure every Californian — no matter their ability to pay — rightly has access to the verbatim record.

Tom Lackey, R-Palmdale represents the 34th Assembly District.