All right.
Good morning, everybody.
I can't whistle, so that's my alternative.
Gavel.
Welcome
to the Judicial Council meeting.
I trust everyone's recovered from their sent in to my celebrations last night.
So let's see.
Assistant Chief Darcy Barnes is here in place of Judge Greg Johnson.
Excuse me.
Greg Anderson, welcome. Nice to see you again.
And then I was down in the third to visit the bench meeting down there.
And why is it echoing
as I'm talking about,
the third, Shelley Messersmith?
So I got this beautiful blanket
which has the third District logo on it.
It also functions very nicely as a lumbar support pillow.
And they also very generously made a donation in recognition of my visit
to the food bank down there. So I really appreciate that.
So, yeah, Third District, Thank you.
I think those are all the announcements we have.
We're going to go ahead and get started with our really exciting agenda today.
And the first item is to entertain a motion
to approve the draft minutes from the April meeting is there.
We didn't
get any additions or corrections, any additions or corrections from council.
All right, then I'll take a motion to approve the minutes as submitted.
All right.
It's been moved
and seconded that we approve of the April meeting minutes as submitted.
All those in favor signify by saying I.
I oppose.
All right. Motion carries.
Now we're on to item number two, which is a discussion item,
and we're going to dedicate much of our morning session
to learning about diversity, equity and inclusion
to enable the council to set the straight strategic direction
toward cultivating a diverse, equitable and inclusive court system.
We have a great panel of presenters
who are going to take us through this conversation this morning.
And we're going to start with our very own Judge Harris,
setting the stage for our discussion. Welcome.
I thank you,
Justice Gilday, And thank you guys all for having us here today
to discuss the issue of diversity, equity and inclusion.
I am just going to start by just introducing kind of the presenters
and then doing a background of how we got here.
So here with me today is Edwin Bell, who's the director of Racial Justice
and Equity and Inclusion for the National Center for State Courts.
We have Dale Macklemore, who is this
excuse me, strategy and development manager in the fourth Judicial District.
I think you all know justice to that.
She will be helping us, Judge Mark Kappa Hall from the Fourth Judicial District
and Dana Bartow, chair.
So today, as I indicated,
we are talking about diversity, equity and inclusion. And
the way this started was we did have a workgroup,
and I do want to acknowledge the workgroup.
This presentation, while I am delivering it with the folks
who are presenting this, really was the brainchild
of a number of people and I'm not going to go through everyone,
but on the slide you can see those folks and I would like to thank them.
I want to particularly give a shout out to Katie Scherrer
because she did a lot of work on this
presentation, and particularly the PowerPoint that you're looking at.
That was her work.
And I think it was just a wonderful piece of work.
So I just want to point her out and give her a special
thanks for the work that she has done on this presentation.
So as I
indicated, we're talking about diversity, equity and inclusion.
And what we are going to do is first start
by talking about what is DEI, why is it important
and why is it important here for the Minnesota judiciary?
And we're going to start by framing this discussion
and how we're going to frame it is first, talk about words.
What do we mean when we talk about diversity, equity and inclusion?
Because as you all know, words matter.
And how we define it and how we talk about it really
helps us move forward into the future as it relates to
how we communicate it to our staff, how we communicate it to our court customers.
Next, we're going to talk about what we're doing here in Minnesota,
whether or not it is a vision now and whether or not
it is a core value here is the bottom line.
As a branch, Minnesota has
value, diversity, equity, inclusion as a branch.
For decades, we have done this work.
So it is important as a branch that we recognize this is a value
and our customers understand
that this is important to us as a branch and this is why it is important.
So we're going to talk about framing.
What have we done as a branch and why have we done these things?
Next, we're going to talk about
diversity, equity, inclusion, both as it relates to the courts
and how we look at this from the lens of a court,
but also as employers.
And how do we look at this from the lens of the court as an employer?
And then finally, as I indicated, we do have Edwin Bell here.
It's important to see what's happening nationally
in the as it relates to diversity, equity, inclusion.
And we took great steps to make sure that as we focus, we're looking at courts.
What are courts doing as it relates to to diversity, equity, inclusion,
Because we all know that DTI is something
that nationally has been a topic in all areas.
And really what we can control, what we can do and what we can
focus on is what as a court, should we be doing around the issue
of diversity, equity and inclusion and how do we get to that place?
We're going to then talk about the next steps,
and this is going to be part of the discussion.
And as I'm talking, I just want to start by saying,
as we go through the slides, if you have questions,
we feel free to ask those questions.
We want this to be a discussion.
This is an opportunity to learn.
We don't know all the answers, but what this will provide us
is an opportunity to have a discussion and to really bounce ideas off of one
another as it relates to the issue of diversity, equity, inclusion.
I know that Justice Gilday talked about what was the goal of the special topic.
And really
I'm going to quickly talk about
as we talk about diversity, equity and inclusion.
I want us to not look at it as this hot topic or this divisive issue.
We're looking at diversity
and equity and inclusion as an important organizational tool
that will help us to move forward
as a diverse organization into the future.
So now I
just want to move forward and discuss just what our objectives are.
First and foremost, as I indicated, we are going to learn about
the current state of diversity, equity, inclusion and the role of diversity equity
inclusion initiatives, policies and practices in state courts.
And we're going to look at this from the lens of what are the best practices
happening nationwide.
Next, we're going to look at understanding why is this work important?
What is the experience?
What has this experience been for our court
as it relates to working in diversity, equity, inclusion?
Third, we're going to then discuss
and understand the historical and current
landscape of diversity, equity and inclusion here in Minnesota.
As I said previously, we've been doing this work.
Many of you have done some things around this work and every single district
in this state has done work around diversity, equity and inclusion.
So we are going to lift that up to discuss that and really talk about
how do we take that work and move it forward.
Third, we're going to talk about key diversity, equity and inclusion terms.
Words do matter.
And when we're talking about diversity, equity and inclusion,
what does that mean for us as a minnesota judicial branch?
What does diversity mean when we talk about it?
What does equity mean when we talk about it?
And what does inclusion mean when we talk about it?
Because it's important
that if this is going to be a value for our district in our state,
we need to be thinking about it in the same language, in the same terms,
and moving forward as one unit around the issue of diversity,
equity and inclusion.
And then finally, we're going to talk about next steps.
This came about
because one of the things that came out of the strategic planning
process was the idea of adding diversity, equity and inclusion as a value.
So the next step discussion is going to be and I'm going to be transparent
as it relates to what my ask is, is that after this discussion,
we as a district, we as a state, we as a branch move forward
with diversity, equity and inclusion as a value
for the Minnesota judicial system.
Before we
discuss the EEI, it's important
that we understand what we're talking about,
what other words we're talking about, and what is it
that we are here to do?
How we got here is, again,
we as a branch,
as part of our strategic goal process,
talk about diversity, equity and inclusion,
and whether or not that is a value that as a branch, we wanted,
as I indicated, as part of the roadmap that came out of that strategic process.
Well, we did have language in that language is on the screen that we wanted
to cultivate a diverse, equitable, inclusive court system.
This is part of the long range plan and we'll talk about how we got there
and the discussion around that later in the presentation.
All of that came a recommendation that as part of our branch
core values, that we add diversity, equity and inclusion.
It is my understanding, and I did watch that
Judicial Council meeting, that there was a discussion about that.
And what came out of that discussion was that an opportunity
came out of that discussion.
That opportunity was that we are here today the opportunity
to have a discussion about diversity, about equity, about inclusion.
I understand and as we talked about that,
the presenters talked about this diversity, equity and inclusion
sometimes is a type of discussion that is uncomfortable,
is uncomfortable because sometimes folks don't know what they can say
and what they should say.
And sometimes we're not operating from the same language
and that we are talking past one another.
So what we want to do is really level set and first discuss.
When we talk about diversity, equity and inclusion,
this is what we are talking about.
And again, I will let you know that as part of this then towards the end,
as we have the discussion and the discussion is going to be
what is diversity and what does that mean for us?
What is equity? What does that mean for us?
What is inclusion and what does that mean for us when I say us as a branch?
So with that, I am going to turn it over to Edwin Bell
to really start that discussion about words and about what does that mean?
Thank you. So
today we will talk about
the use of words and some definitions a little later.
But I want to talk about a few key terms.
Now, just so you know, when I talk about diversity, equity
and inclusion in this space with respect to the judicial branch, just know that
it's framed based on my own experiences, not just of close personal experiences,
but from where I come from,
you know, have really born in California,
you know, my formative years in Kansas or Wichita,
and now I'm in Atlanta, Georgia,
right before coming to the National Center,
you know, the trial courts in the fourth District
there in Georgia and four years at the state board administrator's office.
And so when I frame and think about things, it's on
how do the challenges and the opportunities that we see today,
how do they impact the judicial branch?
Because knowing judges and justices like I do and my colleagues
who are administrators like myself,
I take the approach
that we're all trying to do the right thing.
And I will start off by first saying, before I get into this slide
that Minnesota and the judicial branch here ought to be commended,
even if there are challenges
and people who may not quite understand that I travel and crisscross this country.
And I will tell you with all sincerity
that the Minnesota judicial branch is ahead
of many other judicial branches with respect
to taking these initiatives and moving them forward.
So you ought to be commended for the work that you've done just because far.
So being curious about words,
language is key, how people perceive language and understand
different terminologies, that's important.
And language is critical
as it's a critical component to diversity, equity and inclusion.
Right.
So if one person says something,
does it mean the same thing to the person who hears it or reads it?
When we talk about diversity, those are differences.
We're all different.
So what? It doesn't really matter.
We hope that those differences add value to the conversation, add
value to these organizations of justice
that we call home, Right?
Diversity recognizes the fact that there are differences,
and we respect those differences, not a problem.
Equity.
Now, generally, say here, most of our judges
and lawyers understand equity.
Right.
And I use some simple things using domestic relations.
You know, if there's a divorce and, you know,
one spouse is is partner of big time firm,
you know, equity partner, bringing in $1.5 million a year, another spouse is a,
you know,
a champion of justice for another cause and might be working
in the public defender's office and making $80,000 a year.
But some reason the relationship doesn't work
and there must be some level of division of assets.
Well, judges understand what equity means
and what it takes to make things equitable.
However, sometimes in this context of diversity,
equity and inclusion, sometimes the slope gets a little slippery
and we don't always quite understand what people me but equal opportunity.
Look at it that way, recognizing that different people have different
starting points and might need different
support networks in order for them to have fair outcomes.
Inclusion
differences are welcome,
they're different.
You're all brought in and there's a sense of belonging here.
You hear you listen to those people who might be different from you.
And then therefore, because you're doing those things,
that fosters a sense of belonging by the very people
in which we work with our colleagues, that we support
and the very people who come into and utilize our court systems
makes a lot.
Now, one of the
things that I think all of us in this room
may be familiar with somewhat the but I call the politicizing of work.
That's a fact that that does happen
for various reasons,
especially in politics.
You know, politics is one of those those game you enter to win
where you're in it to win.
And sometimes things get said that may not always be factual or
or or well explained.
So I talk about the concept of equity, how it's been politicized in recent years,
especially with respect to,
I think a lot of people have heard about being woke and all that stuff,
some old words that are now being refreshed
in a new frame that doesn't quite gel with the purpose.
From the very beginning.
Some individual
groups who view or emphasize equity, quite frankly,
as a threat to their individual rights or to their well-being.
Is this a zero sum game?
Meaning if you undergird and support others as a way of fostering
some equity, that that means you're losing something?
It's not true.
And so we try to push back on that type of narrative.
You know, others argue that equity certainly being a central component,
helps to foster a more just and inclusive society around us.
And if people feel like they're being fairly treated and
and are granted some of the same opportunities,
regardless of the outcome,
not everyone's going to get the exact same outcome.
However, at least they feel as though
they were treated a particular way and that that treatment was fair.
Now, when you politicize words,
one of the things that happens, it seems to so confused
people become confused, especially if they're hearing
the terminology used in different ways from different people
or different organizations and different places.
And so we try to be careful about
where we get our information so that we don't confuse ourselves,
because quite frankly, it can be very confusing even to me.
I tell people all the time, I didn't come into this role
at the National Center as some specialist in diversity, equity and inclusion
or racial justice on the Trump administration.
You know, and I know how to make sure court systems run.
I know to make sure that our judges and justices get the things they need
and that my staff are supporting them.
I know how to make sure
that the court systems that I would be in charge of are operating efficiently.
I know how to spend the money.
I know how to work with the legislative arm
to make sure that we get the funding that we're supposed to get.
But innate within me is I'm a fair person,
right?
I'm a general, genuinely a fair person.
I'm an extrovert by nature.
I like people.
And so I try to do those things that are fair
and that operate from a position of just doing the right thing.
And I think most people, if they operate that way,
the politicizing the words goes away.
And it's also important to acknowledge and address that due
to the political nature of things,
especially in a DTI context,
it's it can challenge our ability
to create a more equitable, fair and inclusive world for everyone
and being the best branch
of government that we are,
it's important that we work to maintain our standing
and our position and utilizing DTI is one of the ways,
right?
Thank you.
When I had that Mike
Oh, you got one.
So has,
as has been mentioned before, diversity,
equity and inclusion work is not new to the branch.
We have been doing this work for a really long time
and it was really fascinating for me to even look at our strategic plans
to see how this work is being incorporated into our goals
and actually looking at how as an organization we are systematizing
this to change organizational culture that embraces and welcomes everyone.
So to define diversity, if you walk in, anyone walking into this room
and just taking a, you know, a headcount
can begin to see the representation
that is really obvious in terms of gender or even race.
So diversity really addresses the obvious things that you see
and sometimes the things that are really layered that we really can't see
until we are very intentional on learning more about diversity looks like.
So anyone walking in here may really assume that, you know,
we may not have an issue recruiting and retaining, you know, our female workforce.
They may be looking at other things and say,
what is the representation that the organization really needs to focus on?
So when you think of that acronym, MDI, diversity,
equity and inclusion, diversity exist everywhere.
You see it everywhere.
You know, when you think of an iceberg, 20% of what's on top is what's visible.
80% what is underneath is not visible.
And it's part of all our identities,
the identities that we choose to embrace publicly and openly
and others that people really have to get to dig
a little deeper to help understand that as individuals and as communities,
this is really important because it informs our work.
So diversity, race,
ethnicity, gender, culture,
all of those things are visible things
that we work with every single day.
The layered diversity, our education,
sometimes abilities or disabilities, sometimes ethnicities.
All of these things add to who
we are as human beings and as organizations and informs
the work that we do every day and the communities that we serve.
So typically in D-I work,
we work on the presumption that diversity is already there,
and organizations tend to pick what they need in terms
of bringing in multiple perspectives into the workforce.
Do we need to recruit more women?
Do we need to recruit more individuals who have different abilities?
Do we need to recruit for race?
So this is typically where diversity comes in.
And once an organization has recruited its desired
workforce, it's one thing to recruit them and bring them there.
It's a whole different matter to retain them.
So if the diversity we are looking for
is diversifying our workforce for women,
once we have them in our workforce, how are they being included?
Inclusion really matters and it really is
synonymous with a sense of being welcome and feeling that you belong
and belonging is key to retaining staff.
Belonging is key to retaining customers
and making our course users also feel that they are being seen,
they are being heard, and also they are being valued.
So how do we ensure inclusion?
We make sure that whatever that diversity is,
it's included in decision making processes, is included in
committees, is included in pathways for leadership and management,
and we are incorporating all these multiple perspectives
into the work that we do.
They are not showcases, they are actually valued members
of our staff and also of our community.
Are we paying people equitably?
Are we making sure that they are parts and careers that people can advance
into the workforce?
Or is our diversity really excluded to certain positions in the organization
and they don't have equal access to opportunities to advance.
So now we have diversity.
It helps inform how we include
and then we go into equity.
Equity is really how we customize and differentiate those services
to make sure that everyone has what they need for the same outcome.
This is really
important because sometimes when we have inclusion,
we forget that we have included you in certain spaces,
but we haven't created systems
and structures that continue to inform
whether we are equitable in our practices,
comparable pay for comparable work,
equal advancement for opportunities and making sure
that this is customized for individuals and is also customized for groups.
We are not all the same.
We are uniquely made.
We have different needs and whatever those needs are as an organization,
we can be very intentional in learning what that is and customizing for that.
In the judicial branch.
We do that all the time.
Sentencing have guidelines for those reasons.
If it was one of those situations where if you commit this crime,
this is the sentencing, then we are not applying equity.
There are always extenuating circumstances that have to be considered.
In extenuating circumstances are not necessarily negative.
They are simply
conditions that exist to help address gaps
because it's all about opportunity gaps.
If we have diversity in the workforce, are we ensuring
that there is equal representation and we ensuring that there is equity
next?
So as we said,
this is not new work
to us on the board on this slide.
There are a couple of goals that the branch has systemically included
changed every now and then to ensure that we are focusing on equity
and we are focusing on diversity, equity and inclusion.
So when we look at representation of what that looks like
in the judicial branch is really being very intentional on looking at this
and saying, as an organization, how are we moving forward with this work?
Who gets to see it and who gets to hold us accountable for that work?
Strategic plans.
How you have to dig for those things when you're looking for them.
I actually go into the Minnesota
Judicial Branch website going to who we are to be able to find it.
Your mission, your vision, your core values
are the face fronting expression of who you really are
and your work that is the first thing that people see.
That's the first thing that attract people to your organization.
And it's really what helps your community and other justice partners
and even your staff hold you accountable to the things that you are promised
that you're going to do through your vision
and through your mission and the things that you express as your values.
And what is the impact to staff
and community partners in a community that we serve in justice partners,
Everyone wants to feel that they are valued, and the best way
that you value people is to make sure that they are seen and they are hard.
And the opinions matter and are incorporated in decision making processes.
We seek opinions of our court uses frequently
to try and better understand how we are doing and what else might
we be missing to make sure that we are providing excellence in service?
This is an organization that you know, is led by servant leaders
and we have to exemplify that in the work that we do.
And we can't take that feedback and not act on it.
So we are very intentional on what else can we do
with our changing communities and with changing times to ensure
that we are incorporating feedback and we are customize seeing our services
and adjusting to create the best and equitable and fair
treatment of everyone who walks into our buildings and,
you know, goes through the process of justice.
So what does that mean?
What what does this mean when we fully embrace this work?
It means that
we do what we say we are going to do.
We embrace our communities as they are.
We embrace our staff as they are, and we value their work
in a more visible and a more prominent way,
articulating a shared vision for DEI
across the branch enables all districts
to really embed in this work and to really invest in it as well.
Currently, they are for DEI specialists in the branch.
We have one at the state court, two at the fourth
and one is shared between the 10th and the second.
This work is not exclusive to this districts and these offices.
It should be the work of everyone and embracing this from the very top
allows everyone to really look at their own districts and customize
this work based on their individual needs of their staff and their coach users.
Creating accountability
for progress and growth in DEI initiatives.
We are all held accountable by our shared vision.
When we make this and embrace it and publicly proclaim it, then we are
holding ourselves accountable to the goals that we have set in our strategic plan.
Those words, those goals, those priorities are not just words on text.
They are actually living words that we can be held accountable
to providing a common language for the organization around DEI work.
And as Edwin said, where are we on that journey?
Are we still stuck on diversity?
Are we now moving to inclusion or have we progress to equity?
And how can we walk together and allocate resources
so that all our districts who are doing this work can do this work together
to demonstrate responsiveness to the needs of our changing communities?
Again, we are very intentional in learning from our communities.
Our Equal Justice Committees hold frequent
listening sessions from the community so our judges can have access
to communities that typically
they don't have access to and learn about what really matters to them.
This is important is really important work
because we meet communities where they are
and learn from them to be able to inform our work moving forward.
And this
really in a summary, demonstrates just a commitment
to diversity, equity and inclusion to our staff, to our justice partners,
and to potential employees who we seek to recruit
to join this incredible organization that we all
said.
So in summary,
DEI work,
the ultimate objective of DEI
work is to get to justice.
This is the final goal in the final vision
where all systems of disparities are removed.
And regardless of your race, ethnicity,
the gender you are born in or the one that you embrace
now, your sexual orientation, your abilities or lack of
everyone is seen, everyone is valued,
everyone feels welcomed,
and everyone feels that they belong.
So why does this all matter?
Good morning, everyone.
One lands that we can look at
is some public data that the National Center for State Courts
surveys
every year annually, and these questions
that are asked to the public at large about various institutions.
As you can see, we're up there with other institutions.
We're doing better than the legislatures, governors, federal courts.
I'll point out, as well.
We can pat ourselves on the back there, which is good to see.
But the confidence levels are going the wrong direction
regarding our institutions.
And we are one of the main institutions in our country.
And they're going the wrong direction and they've been going
the wrong direction for a while.
But when you look at and just aggregate
the data based on race,
you will see that the numbers go the other direction very quickly.
There's an enormous disparity between how the public perceives
the judicial system, in particular based on the race and the individual
and how they experience the system and how much confidence they have in the system.
And you can see in the chart on the right hand side
that the question of whether or not the institution provides
equal justice for all in 2021,
for the first time, it's underwater and not going in the right direction.
So it matters because the public
that those are our customers, those are the individuals
that we see as judges when they come into our courtrooms.
People of color perceive the experience differently or in fact, experience it
differently, which is critically important for all of us.
And we all should be concerned and care that.
And as
Judge Kavanaugh indicated,
the community, these are our customers.
And as a branch we are moving towards and we have been
in a customer service focus, how are we serving our customers
and the way we know how we're serving our customers is what they're telling
us, and the community is telling us that diversity,
equity and inclusion is important.
Communities of color are telling us this.
So it is important not only to look at the data,
but to understand from a customer service focus.
We will only move forward is
if we embrace what the customers are telling us.
I think the best way I could put it is a judiciary or a bench
that reflects the community we serve will get the value from that community.
They're going to they're going to respond when they see
that we are living and we are moving forward.
The values that they ask us to do.
I think to put it another way, if we want people of all races,
genders, social orientation, Asians
to really believe in judicial fairness,
then we need to make sure that not only are we
setting diversity, equity and inclusion as a value,
but we are living diversity, equity and inclusion as a value.
And I think and a number of the customer service models
we are doing this one court, Minnesota, the flexible courtroom pilot,
these are all things that really people from diverse communities
get the access to us as a branch.
I think it is important because when we talk about diversity,
equity and inclusion to to state that
as judges, as judicial officers,
I have no doubt that every single one of us, as we sit in
whatever district, has the goal
of equal justice for all.
When you have individuals coming before you a courtroom,
there is not this idea that I'm just going to set aside
this diversity and I'm going to do what I want.
And it's that the person in front of us, they deserve to have a fair
and neutral, impartial individual making their decisions.
But the fact is, there are barriers between that.
And those barriers are what our system is.
And we need to, as a branch, look at what are other things we can do
to eliminate those barriers
so that when folks, no matter what race, what gender,
sexual orientation or any other
known or unknown quality that folks have,
they will see that that individual, there's not that barrier there.
So with that, I think we're going to move forward with
Judge Kavanaugh.
And we can't understate the impact that we all have as judges.
You look at the number of cases we have annually in the court system
throughout our state, 900 to 1000000 cases, Those are all touch points
for individuals who experience justice in the state of Minnesota
before all of us, they appear before all of us.
And that experience not only transcends to them, it's their family members
who they speak to and their experiences in our courtrooms matters.
We are an institution that is held up very high
in the eyes of the public, and we have an obligation
to ensure that we maintain that level of trust and confidence.
And by engaging in diversity, equity, inclusion,
we can enhance that experience for those who come into our courtrooms every day.
And that's why this is so critical.
And I applaud the Judicial Council and the chief justice's leadership in this
in pointing out how important one court, Minnesota, that vision is so important
that we are one state, one judicial branch, and we want everyone to experience
a positive experience in accordance throughout the state,
not just in one area, but throughout the state.
And that's thanks to the chief justice and all of you
who believe that is an important value that we all collectively share.
Thank you.
So I'm here
partly because of this resolution on the screen, Resolution one, right?
Essentially, CCJ and Costa hereby agree
to contest to continue and intensify efforts to combat racial prejudice
within the judicial system, both explicit and implicit,
and to recommit to examine what systemic change is needed
to make equality under the law an enduring reality for all
so that justice is not only fair to all,
but recognized
by all.
To be fair,
that is extremely important.
It's it's not enough nowadays
to say, you know, I'm fair.
I treat people fair.
Again.
I believe you.
That's sort of my professional upbringing.
I believe that our judges and justices, I believe that our administrators
and their staff who run the systems that we function in are fair.
But the people on the outside have to recognize the systems
we're in is fair or otherwise they'll continue to be this disconnect.
So get to the crux of one of the tools
we'll use and and that's become available.
So racial justice organizational assessment tool.
It's across three areas that it looks at.
And when you conduct an assessment of yourself, certainly
try and identify within your particular system the capacity
for the community based learning and data driven decision making.
Right.
You're learning from the community what they're saying with their
what you're processing from what's being said to you.
And then the data that you might housed within your respective
systems, court case management systems.
What does it tell you in data?
It does tell you things, right?
If you have the right people to use it and to review it,
sometimes you can identify particular patterns.
But this tool also looks at your bench, your workforce, you know,
what are the equities or inequities that might persist.
And quite frankly, sometimes there are reasons for
those that are not nefarious at all.
You know, there's some people would say, well, if if a community is,
you know, 20% African-American,
50% white
or non person of color,
3% native American or American
Indian, however, whatever vernacular, then shouldn't your spaces,
being your courts and such directly reflect that?
Well, not really.
I mean, it's not you're not always able to do that.
You do You may be able to there's hiring practices.
There are people who apply who wish to consider particular jobs.
Some people never heard of them, don't know they exist.
If you're you're like me.
I didn't go to college and think that I was going to be a court administrator.
You know, it wasn't discussed.
And so there are various reasons, but this tool looks at some of those things,
and there's certainly accessible
and equitable service delivery within your court community.
The reality is
how you function should
where the law allows it,
how you function should reflect the needs of the community.
You sir,
I was in a community once that I where I used to live
many, many years ago, a very large
Hispanic or Latino community.
And the court you zero
forms translate it to which
70 some odd percent of the community could, could, could read.
And so that was a challenge.
So I'll go to the next slide, please.
So this tool that was created has a purpose,
and we're not going to do the tool today
or there's not going to be some assessment done of everyone sitting here.
But if this tool is for for court leaders, those of you in this room
assess the current state of your DTI
policies and practices
and to help develop a more data driven plan,
I talked about how there's often a squeaky wheel
and we want the squeaky wheel to go away.
And historically we make the squeaky wheel go away.
We throw the resources, the time, the energy, the talent
at whatever that is.
So quieted down.
However, that's not always the best use of time and resources.
So it's best to take sort of a data
driven approach to understand maybe some of those
more underlie leaning issues that aren't as in-your-face,
pervasive, loud, bothersome,
whatever you whatever you like to call it, and then therefore
you have a more cohesive and and certainly complex
approach for tackling whatever the issues are.
Next slide, please.
So the purpose of the tool
is to serve as the judiciary's compass.
I talked about that squeaky wheel,
the compass, if you were in the scouts, if you learn how to use a compass,
some people in the military, I don't know if they still teach our young
soldiers, airmen and Marines to how to how to do this, but it helps to guide you,
to guide you the right way.
That's one of the purposes of the tool,
right?
This is not just so that you just do stuff.
We're not just out here just throwing,
again, resources to the wind.
This allows courts to assess
this tool, allow courts to assess themselves
anonymously.
And there's a reason for that.
You need to understand for yourself
what's going on in your house per say,
and then come up with a game plan.
It's not productive
and quite frankly, it could be counterproductive
to have this open dialog
and so that every Tom, Dick and Harry
can comment and get involved
in assessing your operation.
It needs to be anonymous
so that people cannot weaponize
the results against you.
Okay?
It also allows for you to take the results
and then allow you to see where you should focus your priorities.
And there are a number of priorities and different in different places,
and you'll have to determine what those are.
Right?
It's not a single person within the court who's going to do this.
You know, you print the tool out, give it to certain leaders
within your district or within the Judicial Council.
And certainly moving forward a nuanced and strategic approach
to possibly utilizing this tool would certainly come
from the chief and Jeff and through this body here,
not that every court just jumps out here and dives into using the tool,
but take a strategic approach so that you can decide
what those priorities are based on what comes from it.
And then you can determine which path you need to move forward.
Next slide, please.
Now, the development of this tool, why why was it created?
Well, quite frankly, it was the number one thing I was asked
for when I was hired,
when I came on board to the National Center and 2020th October
2020, as all of us in this room know, that 2020 was a tough year.
You know, one of the things I hear from judges
most of the time that, well, you know, Edwin, we're not the police.
We're not out here. We didn't kill anybody.
That's right.
You didn't.
But my early career was I was in law enforcement.
And what I know is the general public see us all as the same,
Right?
They don't think that there is really a separation or difference.
If they happen to run into any of us and there's a prosecutor over here,
a public defender here, some other civil council attorney here, court staff,
and they run into at a shopping mall or at the grocery store or what have you.
And they're looking and you're chatting it up cordially
that you know, frame something to them that, oh, you all are all the same.
And so it's not enough to say, well, I did.
We didn't do that. That's not us.
No, you did not. Of course not.
But you have to understand, people
who don't operate in our systems don't know that.
And they don't believe that we're not all in this together
and have the same single frame of mind.
Okay.
Now, in this development, again, number one thing I was asked for,
I had judges and justices say, can you give us something
for that compass?
We said, okay, let's figure out how we can do this.
And I'm not a researcher at all, right?
I don't have a Ph.D.
in data science or any of that, but we have a bunch of them
at the National Center.
And so we use them.
And we also formed an advisory group of judicial officers and other court
leaders who provided real world input
because that was important to me.
To me, it doesn't make sense to have people who either
have never worked in a court before or in a court
system before create something for use by the courts.
It really makes no sense to me.
That is very foreign to me.
But I will tell you in some states that they're using tools and such that I would
be firmly against
this tool is made for courts by courts
or courts by courts, and it will be an interim tool.
So it will continue to change over time.
It's been tested.
It's certainly been tested and
by other courts before it was launched and recognized.
Thank you so much, Judge Harris.
And we can interrupt with questions.
And I'm going to follow his lead and do that,
because I do think this is really interesting.
And thank you all so much for for the presentation.
So I was going to ask about I mean, I know this tool has just been launched,
so because I'm always a big one on let's look at
how this is working in other states.
But what were so two parts of my question.
One, what were the big takeaways from the pilots,
if you would?
Because I saw you had pilots.
And two, as far as developing this, the compass
that you just talked about, you know, what's the time frame and bandwidth?
I'm just thinking as we're looking at, you know, weighted
caseload studies and fairness necklace access studies.
If you could just give us a sense of that, that would be really helpful.
And perhaps you were just about to do that.
And I interrupted. Well, well, thank you for the question.
So the tool doesn't focus on any of those things
as far as weighted case load is it doesn't focus on that.
It really takes the the thoughts and opinions
of what we see as core people in a judicial setting
who have what I would think a deep
understanding of their individual system.
And then there's a series of questions.
And as the questions are answered, there's algorithm running
in the background that prompts for additional responses.
So it
doesn't it doesn't take into consideration necessarily,
you know, case size,
necessarily jurisdiction size.
It's it's it's quite frankly, it is opinion
based, but it's in opinion.
And so to step back to,
you know, the launch and the feedback from from other courts,
some of the feedback we received was that it didn't go deep enough.
Right.
Initially didn't go deep enough with respect to the line of questioning.
But it'll we'll continue to learn from it
as it begins to be used
quite more frequently.
And we there's a a pathway in the system where
whichever courts utilize the system can sort of report back
their feedback and concern and then tweaks and adjustments will happen.
So this is like version one.
Then obviously we had 1.1.2, 2.0 and so forth and so on.
So I know that may not answer
everything that you're interested in, but I'd be more than happy to
connect with you at a later, later time
just to ensure that I answer any additional questions that you might have.
And just, just, just and I'll jump in because we did also
have a discussion around the time frame.
And I think Edwin spoke to that.
The idea with this tool is to be strategic and thoughtful and planful.
So the idea is that if we are looking to make these a value,
then this is one tool that as we move forward, if it's
a statewide value that we can utilize to make sure that each district
is really adhering to that
and we can move it forward, we recognize that we have caseloads
where we have cases, we weighted case loads.
Now you guys have more meetings than we can count,
so we recognize that we have things to do.
So really the idea around this tool is as a branch,
if we are saying that this is going to be a value,
then we can take this tool and say for the Minnesota Judicial branch,
what is the plan moving forward?
When will we be able to use this tool?
How will we use this tool?
And then again, as we go
through this, that tool will be constantly updated
and there will be more information from pilots for us to really move forward.
So I think
the short answer is
we have the ability to kind of control the outcome
if we are going to utilize this as a value.
Next to slide sleeves,
skip that
next slide again.
Thank you.
So the tool, those sections.
Oh, that one slide. I'm sorry, I might have.
There we go. Thank you.
There are some sections within the tool
that pertain to these areas here.
Again, we're not going to complete it today.
However, the sections that will frame some additional discussion
that's going to occur, but judicial commitment, vision and leadership
sort of goes to Judge Harris to speak about
what is our value here
and then strategically deciding the avenues
that we're going to take to utilize this tool in one way, shape or form.
You know, the capacity for community based
learning, data driven decision making, the bench and court workforce.
And I and I'll say here,
I'm not exactly sure how our judges
and justices are selected in this state,
but when we talk about the bench
and workforce with respect to diversity,
what I do talk about, I say, listen, if
if our judges or justices are elected,
we can't we can't change that.
Right?
You're elected if they are appointed by the governor
or some body of the state
legislature or judicial commission or however it is,
we can't change that.
But do our judges ever take vacations or the statute
allow for non judges to ever hear anything?
And by designation, are there people who the general public
may call judge, but they're not really a judge?
These are some avenues in some areas of which sometimes you can make inroads
so that the people that come before you say, Oh, wow, there are some people here
that might understand my culture, certainly race.
Yeah, but you know, culture and my community and neighborhood,
that's diversity as well.
You know, if everybody is a gopher,
right, that's the University of Minnesota's that
if everybody's a gopher and nobody went in
Kansas, went to Washburn,
you know, there might be, you know, good grief.
There's a particular philosophy that is at play and
and how I came up is and consider so there are a number of different ways.
Same for the for the workforce
you know there's may or may not be lots of turnover
now this remote environment is switching back to
from a sort of hybrid to a mostly in person.
There might be some turnover, there might have some
retirements and some opportunity to bring in the diversity.
Doesn't mean less qualified
right?
Sometimes I get that as well.
Diversity of our workforce,
you know, these are even off the bench, but more so of the workforce.
So I've got to lower our standards and I always laugh at that
because generally when I look at my resume over my 25 years
compared to some of my colleagues
who hold higher positions, I'm like, how did they get the job in that
right?
And so you can't look at diversity, meaning you're lowering something,
you're just adding to it.
It's like seasoning. You're cooking
and then course service services.
The tool, well, they'll talk about some of this today,
sort of the assessment and where that may fall with respect to
looking at the services provided in courts.
Next slide, please.
Then we talk about how best to use the tool.
And again,
there'll be some strategic direction that this body will want to consider
over a period of time, because you don't want to haphazardly jump
into using anything you like to take a strategic approach,
understand exactly why you're doing it and how, and then
collectively there's a decision to be made and then you move forward.
And then when using this tool, you know, you like to determine
sort of who whose input do we need
in order to understand what's really going on with our system.
I frequently say this about our judges and justices.
Look, many most are somewhat isolated from the court.
Real world.
You're busy people.
You you have calendars, you've got meetings, you've got all sorts of things.
And so for the for most of you, the general public can't just walk into
your court facility and go knock on your door and say,
hey, can I talk to you for a minute?
Just doesn't happen that way.
And so, quite frankly, sometimes information that does get to you is filtered,
right?
It's filter.
Just that's what it is. No problem. There's nothing wrong with that.
We can't we can't bother with the mundane that the tree is dying
and that the landscaping people aren't trimming it.
Right.
We had bother you with some of that stuff.
And so but we do need to decide when we're utilizing this tool
what people are best to sit around,
take their hard copies, fill it out.
Certainly one person enters it into the system,
but to collectively review and understand
the questions that are being asked and then decide
what answers are best to be put into the tool.
And then once it's done,
you know, or while you're doing it, because you may see
questions that don't pertain to you, you don't understand, can you skip them?
Yes, if it just really doesn't make sense,
especially if there are
aspects of the tool that don't really apply to your jurisdiction.
And that's going to happen because every state's different.
And then within the states, especially in both a unified
and non unified judicial systems, there are some differences.
And so there may be questions within the tool that don't really make sense.
And then one of the things that is very important,
should the courts identify their priorities upfront?
There should be some, right, maybe some before you your initial
put your toe in the water and take some initial steps
to utilizing the tool and going through its assessment protocol.
You know, what are your priorities?
Are you hoping to get from this?
And then if you need to come back and do it again,
my decision is not it's not always a one and done,
because I think what with those who might be involved in
in conducting the assessment and answering the questions,
might find that it's quite frankly, it's not that difficult.
And that was the purpose weren't trying, you know, even though, yes, we have these
PhDs and data scientists and all at the National Center,
the point was it to make it overly complicated to where it's not usable,
you know, upfront questions,
you know, answer the questions, let it ride,
and then what steps would be helpful to prioritize?
First, this will help you.
The tool will it'll help guide you.
Quite frankly, there may be a item that the tool
sort of points to the sense this should be number one.
But then there are realities on the ground.
It might say it should be number one, but there could be other factors,
not in the tool that could
force you to adjust
what you tackle first, second or third.
You might have to put number three what some people want to get those
low hanging fruit, get it, have a quick victory.
That might be the need to do it, to do it that way.
But you will have a guide once you're done with it.
And then if you need more help, call me.
We'll set something up.
If once a decision is made as to the direction
that you all choose to take and you're looking at if something
doesn't make sense, we'll pull our people together.
You know, do a remote call more than likely and figure out
what should happen next.
So that's all I have for the moment.
Any additional questions or or reactions?
I was that good.
Okay, I figured as much, but I want to keep going.
It's up to you to if we can, now
would be a good break or we can keep pushing through.
I was thinking we break about 1030.
Is that going to make sense?
Absolutely. Nation
Yes. Okay.
I think we're going to have justice shoot.
It's just
interesting.
You're doing great so far.
All right.
So I know, I know.
Right now we're on Slide 24 and many of you are looking at a 92 slide.
So it's a 92 slide PowerPoint.
And you're wondering, how's the magic going to happen now?
Now we're going to see it.
All right.
So again, we're going to transition
now to diversity, equity and inclusion in the Minnesota courts.
And really,
this is really about the fact
that it has been happening in our courts and it has been happening for a long time
where we're going to and in this section really talk about, one,
our strategic goals and strategic planning that we've gone through.
And I think this is the part where the magic happens because we can go
a little bit through this because you guys have debated this
and talk about this quite a bit.
So I don't need to remind you of those strategic goals.
And then we're going to get into the history of what we have been doing
not only as a branch, but many individual districts.
So I think first and foremost, as it relates to DIY,
there needs to be a commitment and that commitment needs to come
from the top and particularly it needs to come from us as judges.
We have a mission, vision and core values.
And again, my hope at the end of this discussion is that discussion
will lead to the core value of diversity, equity and inclusion being added.
But again, even throughout our mission vision and core values, there are
there's language that really talks diversity,
equity and inclusion, but doesn't call it out specifically.
And our hope is that
we call it out specifically when we talk about equal justice for all.
Really, that is a broad way of saying, you know, diversity, equity and inclusion.
I think that's we're saying the same thing right?
So as part and we can move forward as part of the strategic
strategic planning process, we went through again
this year, the branch did something very different.
We decided not only to do
a strategic planning process, but really look at a ten year roadmap
and really think strategically about what are we doing into the future.
And as part of that strategic planning process
and as part of the meetings with that strategic planning process, the diverse,
the discussion about diversity, equity and inclusion was front and center.
We talked about it quite a bit.
And really the thought was that one, we all had the presentation
from the state demographer and that was I think about three or four years ago.
And the outcome or the takeaway was that
the makeup of our community is changing
and that this was going to be coming and you need to be ready.
We talked about that from a standpoint of age.
We talked about that from a standpoint of race and many other things.
And I remember that presentation because I remember being in the
at the Radisson and being in that room and seeing all those judges in there and
I was just back at that presentation, back at the Radisson last year
and looking at the judges in the room from then and now, the demographer is right.
From an age standpoint, we have had a great turnover.
And from a race standpoint,
more people of color are in front of us.
So we needed to think and we need to get out on the front end of this
as it relates to really focusing on diversity, equity and inclusion
strategically as our communities and as our society continues to change,
we can move forward with the next slide excuse me, slide
again,
Data.
I always I'm a big fan of data.
I think data
should inform every decision that we make, and I think it's important for data
to inform every decision we make and what the data is telling us
As part of the strategic process.
We did get state stakeholder feedback
and we got stakeholder feedback as it relates to some D-I questions.
And the responses were that our stakeholders
are telling us that this should be a focus of our branch.
And this was a very clear message from not only external stakeholders
but internal stakeholders, judges, courts that, you know, universally
this should be a focus of what we're doing or at least one focus
of what we're doing.
Next slide.
So as part of the roadmap,
as I indicated, one of the things that was approved
was cultivating a diverse, equitable, inclusion, inclusive court system.
Again, what that means, what we talk about, what the words mean.
This is a discussion we can have, but ultimately
I think we are all on the same page.
I don't think there's much dissent in that.
Having a judicial branch that reflects our community,
but not just our community as it relates to how we look, but our community values.
We need to have values that also reflect the community values.
All right. We can move forward.
Okay.
We'll move forward.
This is going to be the speed up part here, move to the next one as well.
So I think we do want to talk about the history, what we have done.
This is one of the big takeaways that I tell folks and I want to leave with
this room is we've been doing the work of diversity, equity and inclusion.
And since, you know, the mid to early eighties,
no matter who was in the seat of chief right.
Every single time from that point on, we're doing the work.
And it has been the leadership of many chief judges, including
and specifically Chief Judge Gilday, that is pushing this work along.
We are doing the work, and I just want to reiterate
that we are doing the work and we continue do the work.
So I want to talk about the work we have been doing.
I'm going to turn that to Judge Kapil Hoff and Justice Dudek.
Thank you. Good morning, everybody.
We started doing this work back in 1987
with the formation of the Gender Fairness Task Force.
And that task force issued a report in 1989
that focused on the areas of family law, domestic violence,
criminal and civil justice and the courtroom environment.
And it, frankly, that the task force identified
gender bias as a major issue in the Minnesota judicial branch
around that same time, in 1990, a
racial bias task force was established,
and it issued its report in 1993.
And that report again identified a racial bias
within all aspects of the justice system from the first contact with the police
through charging and and if you're interested in these
in the recommendations of these task force,
our Committee for Equality and Justice did follow ups
about recording all of the actions that the judicial branch has taken
in the intervening years to deal with those recommendations.
And those the gender fairness
sort of overall summary is on
our website and the racial bias summary will be there soon.
So it's really an interesting history of the journey
that the court has taken in these areas.
So then as a result, these
task forces,
local committees were formed, the Equal Justice committees,
to try and work on these issues and you'll hear in a moment
that these committees still play a very vital role in our RTI efforts
and then the judicial Council, you all were established in 2005
and into 2010, you realized that there needed to be greater statewide
coordination for these efforts and formed
the Committee for Equality and Justice.
Next slide, please.
And so these are the three committees
who that work on these diversity equity and inclusion
efforts,
and we'll talk about them in a little more detail.
It's the Committee for Equality and Justice and then the Associated
District, Equal Justice Committees, then the tribal court, state court forum.
Next slide, please.
So the Committee for Equality and Justice is an advisory
to two U to the Judicial Council.
It's the primary D.
I leadership body in the branch and Mission
is six is essential to a successful court system
to advance efforts to eliminate bias from court operations,
promote access to the court, and inspire a high level of trust
and public confidence in the Minnesota judicial branch.
There are 28 of us serving on the Committee for Equality and Justice.
There are judges from each of your districts
justice system, partners, attorneys,
employees, and members of the public.
Next slide, please.
So we
have four subcommittees that at the moment that address
topics like access and fairness, community outreach,
diversity, equity and inclusion, education for judicial
and improving access to civil justice.
And we're going to just highlight a few of our recent efforts in 20.
In 2022, we published the study on probation
revocations and recommendations.
That report examined processes that can be used for local
probation, revocation report, studies
to determine if and where people of color
are disproportionately revoked to prison in the district.
And so the report made recommendations about how each local
Equal Justice Committee could
take the steps that you would take to undertake this work.
And so far, a couple of districts have done it
with interesting results.
And then we also published a 2021
jury race that, a report and recommendation
that reviewed the race data of those who are called for jury service,
those who were selected for jury panels and those who were seated.
And then the report made recommendations on closing gaps
that were identified and encouraging people to serve as jurors.
And I'm going to turn it over to Judge Campbell half to talk about the Education
subcommittee and the local district.
I think you just choose in as Judge Harris's point, we're doing this work.
As you can see, this is just
a small reflection of the work that we do in equality and justice.
The local equality
committees have been working on the ten year review of community dialogs.
Many districts have gone out and conducted dialog over the last
ten years to meet with community members
to get that feedback from the customers whom we serve.
And that feedback has helped
to form informed policies and frankly, change policies.
On the Education Committee, the committee I serve on.
We made recommendations to allow for academy training
for judges as as well as other efforts that are ongoing.
Another effort
that many of you are familiar with, the implicit bias jury instruction.
Well, first of all, the bench card,
then the jury instruction now is the model jury instruction.
So we're already doing much of this work and we continue do this work
really through this committee, through the Committee on Equality
and Justice and through all the local branches as well,
which moves this issue to the forefront and continues to be moving forward.
And as we learn more, obtain more data,
we change policy based upon that. Do
x-line
in the District Equal Justice Committee.
I had the pleasure to be the chair of the Committee in Hennepin County.
We worked on a variety of efforts and those are just some of the efforts
we've undertaken. The dialogs are really important.
In fact, we had one just recently, a couple of weeks ago on Hennepin County.
We met with community members
and it was really important to hear from the community.
They reflected back that the community was experiencing a juvenile crime
scene in the paper, but we heard firsthand from the community, sat down with them.
They expressed their point of view. We had a listening session.
It's so important with the community here.
And afterwards, the conversation continued.
It was a really robust,
thoughtful conversation, what was happening in the community.
And you again, it's the touch points as judges.
Those are our customers.
Those are the individuals who are hearing in our courtroom
and those are the individuals seeking justice in courtrooms
throughout the state,
in the local district, Equal justice committees throughout the state played
this critical role in creating these partnerships with stakeholders.
We advise on
promoting certain jobs to affinity groups, and there are many other efforts
underway, creative efforts by the local district, Equal Justice Committees,
which came out of, again, the effort collectively as the branch recognizing
this is a core value of who we are and what we are
as a branch
of the tribal court.
State court forum is another place where these efforts take place,
and the purpose of this forum is to enhance the relationships
between tribal and state courts, to provide an opportunity
to address issues that arise the courts, concurrent jurisdictions.
The forum shows its commitment to diversity and inclusion
by sharing the leadership of the forum between, two tribal
court judges and to state court judges.
The meetings rotate between the tribal
court and state court locations.
So the forum has created a space
for leaders to discuss and share information on issues
like Minnesota's Joint Tribal Court, state court,
drug and DWI courts.
The relationships that were created through
the tribal courts or the forum have been key
to increasing state court understanding about tribal court initiatives
that have helped improved outcomes in tribal court.
The Forum relations chips have also helped our State Indian Child Welfare Act
courts be more welcoming and successful
by conducting flagg and blessings.
The forum
recently celebrated its 15th year anniversary of the Joint Powers Agreement
between the Leech Lake Tribal Court and the Itasca County District Court.
And you can see the powerful ceremony when the flags were installed
in that courtroom and the agreement was historic,
a first of its kind collaboration between a tribal and state court
and not just in Minnesota, but nationally.
We're going to shift gears
a little bit and talk about data and how we use to form policies here.
Here in the branch.
We can go to the next slide and how we use data driven decision making.
So let me just stop you using we should just do a little mini break
right now before you start into the data
or just you're just asking the same question, Are you too connected? So
that we only knew,
why don't we take the lead, We just take a ten minute stretch break
and then we'll come back and dig into some more?
Thank you.
That was funny.
I guess we.
Hey, everybody.
Here we go.
Really
solid.
All right.
We're back at it now.
I hope everybody got going.
Going
right now,
we're taking a vote
between Judge Lawson and I.
Who do you think made the scones?
Judge Lawson made the Scots.
I hope everybody got one.
All right.
Ready to go, Judge Harris or Judge Kapil Hough?
Who's ever going go are.
All right.
All right. Welcome back.
Now we get to talk about data or at least the data that we gather
and we gather a lot of data in the branch.
And the data is important, particularly to specifically
the performance measures report that is biannual.
We use the data to inform how we make decisions in the branch, how we operate,
how individual districts operate, and we also measure access and fairness
in the courts.
We look at jury pools and we have self-reported race data
that we're collecting.
In fact, we're in the process
of expanding that into other courts other than just the criminal courts.
We can go to the next slide,
the Access and Fairness survey,
which we conduct on a regular basis every five years.
We just completed the one, the appellate court Access and Fairness.
And we're going to have now this year we're doing the District Court
Access and Fairness Survey.
And that is incredibly, incredibly helpful data
that helps, again, inform us how our customers
are perceiving their experiences in our courtrooms throughout the state.
And that data is used to correct or address
any concerns that are raised in those surveys.
And we do this on a regular annual basis in each of our courts
and it really is very important data that we use to make decisions.
We can go to the next slide.
One data driven decision that this
committee instituted was the impact
evaluating the appeal tool
to make sure it's race neutral and addresses all the needs.
And again, we use data to help inform policies
that the branch institutes impact is one of those tools that now
we have throughout the state that was informed by the data we collect.
We can go to the next slide.
We have the annual report of the judicial branch.
And again, the purpose is to measure our progress
to meeting our goals, our core performance goals.
Again, our values.
And we reflect that to ensure that we're accountable
and we're transparent and we share that information with the public.
To gain the public trust the public trust, the branch
which we hope the public does, the public is much more likely
to understand our orders and follow our orders, respect the court,
and it enhances all of our roles as judicial officers throughout the state.
And we use the D.
I related resources as a result of that through annual report,
as reflected in the annual report.
Next slide.
We have the data
dashboard and we have a number of data requests
that oftentimes come in to the branch.
In fact, 300 data requests
annually by our court research office.
We produce this information publicly.
We're transparent, forward leaning about the data.
So I'm a bit of a data nerd myself.
I think like Judge Harris, and I think it's incredibly important.
I actually enjoy reading this and seeing how we're doing as my district
or statewide, and it identifies for us
where we can do better.
We can go to the next slide.
Again, it's evidence
based decision making, community based learning.
We we learn from our community that we survey
and how they experience the court system.
We do that, as I mentioned earlier,
the dialog sessions that we have with community stakeholders.
Critically important, though high justice partner meetings where
there was a
survey and meetings with justice partners throughout the state to reflect
how we should conduct our court hearings, whether they should be in-person,
whether they should be remote,
how their experience in how their clients are experiencing.
There was an intentional effort by the court to collect that data
and then use that data to make evidence based decisions
in how we operate the court system.
We've used data to address warm resolution days, Law Day treatment courts.
We use data in really all aspects of the operation of the court.
And I think it improves our
our customer service and improves how community perceives the court.
It builds trust and it shows transparency, and we produce it
on a regular basis.
So the important part
of that discussion about data is that we are collecting data
around the issue of diversity, equity and inclusion.
And we should, as we move forward
to make this a value, use that data to continue
to think about ways we can do better around those issues.
So again, this is just showing
that we're doing the work in terms of getting the information,
but we need to use it in a way to do better around it.
So we're going to now transition to really talk about not just diversity,
equity and inclusion as a court, but also as a work force.
Because again, as we think about diversity, equity and inclusion
and thinking about the words, it means something different
as it relates to the branch as a workforce.
So we should really discuss what it means as a workforce.
So I'm going to turn it over to Dana Bartow, Chief,
so we are going to go
through some data slides relatively quickly.
Where are we today?
What does our workforce look like, including our judges and our staff?
And what does the state of Minnesota look like?
This is to give us a snapshot of a picture.
It is a story.
It is what today's story is, and it's important to see where we are today.
So as we look forward to where we want to be in the future,
we can identify where we want to go in the future.
So you can see through this data where we are
in Minnesota as far as racial and ethnic diversity
and then where we are for judicial staff
and maybe overall,
you can see on the next slide,
our staff, race and
ethnicity demographics that our non managers and supervisors
have a more diverse than our managers and supervisors
at the MJB.
As you may notice, when you walk into our courthouses,
we have a gap with the 5050 of males and females in our state
and have a highly predominant female workforce
and our judicial officers are over 50% female.
Well,
you can see that our staff are more have a
more even ratio and our managers as well.
Age demographics
can talk about what Judge Harris was talking about earlier.
You can see, especially in our judicial officers, that changing
ratio as well as that our staff and our MJB Overall,
you can see the large increase of 18 to 49 year old staff.
Get a little more detail on that.
You can see that 18 to 39 really growing in that non
manager role.
So what have we done it?
It was mentioned that in preparing for our strategic plan,
our staff were in all the folks who were,
who were surveyed wanted to increase staff
diversity as well as judicial
diversity, as well as offer more education.
And that's just what we've been doing.
When we look at our applicant diversity, we saw the snapshot of what
our population is, but we have increased our applicant diversity by 2.4%.
So we're really looking at the data behind and what we're doing.
In order to do that, we meet monthly with all the recruiters
around the state to talk about areas of improvement
and how we can increase the diversity, our applicant pool and then to hire.
We've also expanded our gender identity and pronouns in the applicant process
to increase the access and the inclusiveness of our application process.
We also have engaged in more outreach, especially now having online outreach,
but specifically to diverse groups, including I was just out a few weeks ago.
I got to stop by and see our table at the deaf culture, language and career fair.
We also have increased social media engagement as we look at that,
the age population that we're trying to reach, much more social media
engagement engages that population, which is also a more diverse
population.
We also, in the last two years have provided
way more trainings for our hiring authorities,
judicial officers and ways to reduce bias in the hiring process.
The interview process also we talked about Jill talked about equity in pay
we have smaller salaries starting guidelines now,
making sure that we have equitable pay
for the work that we are doing here.
We have a special section on judges as appointing authorities as well.
You might want to check out
that has a lot of this information specific to hiring your judicial staff.
Jael also talked about the importance of inclusion,
that we aren't just recruiting our staff, but how are we maintaining an environment
that retains our staff of inclusion and belonging?
Just recently we've launched a fully new program
on for all of our new staff members.
So every single new employee goes through a program
on inclusion when they enter the branch.
We also have a variety of other trainings.
The culture perspectives you might be familiar with, as well
as at the annual Conference of Judges and all of our cohort programs.
Having DNI as a focus as part of the program,
we have prioritized including diversity,
equity and inclusion in all of our training,
and we started pursuing new training options as well as things
that you may not think of as promoting diversity, equity and inclusion,
but things like the new judge
or the newer judge affinity group.
Our newer judges, the younger group, are also more diverse
and providing that opportunity for them to connect.
And that was through our EOD committee.
So we are doing a lot and we want to continue to do more
to promote diversity, equity and inclusion and ultimately belonging
in our organization.
Okay.
So we've now talked about diversity, equity and inclusion
efforts as the branch as a hiring employer.
We've talked about diversity, equity and inclusion with the branch
as it relates to the Committee for Equality and Justice and the history
of what the bench has done.
And now we're going to pivot to court services again.
This is the place and these are the folks who are really the forward facing
face of the judiciary.
These are the folks who see our clients
or see our court customers on a daily basis.
So there are a number of things, initiatives that we have done
as a branch around court services.
I think in the third they have the jury improvement project.
Again, that is an example of equity.
This idea that we are trying to make sure that our jury pools
are one more diverse in the way we get to our jury pools.
Being more diverse is again creating access points
through equitable outcomes and through equitable practices
to get people into the door, into our jury pools
as part of our strategic
plan, or at least the operational plan for fiscal year 24,
we are going to be implementing the revisions to the impact.
I am aware of the discussions
regarding the men part and all of those discussions in this room.
So I'm going to say it passed and we're going to be doing that.
And again, that's an issue around equity
and inclusion and really around making sure
that we are having fair outcomes as it relates to our bail decisions.
Again, that is a d-ii
item.
We are focusing on equitable access to treatment courts.
Again, treatment courts are a good thing.
It's something that keeps folks out of the traditional court process
and gives them an opportunity to get the treatment, to make them well
and be productive members of the community.
So because they are so good, we want to make sure that every one of our
citizens who have an opportunity to access them gets that opportunity.
So we have to look at diversity in particularly
equitable ways to make sure that's happening again.
That is a DEA issue.
We're redesigning our website to make sure that is more accessible.
And again, going back to my earlier theme about we have been doing this,
we are translating forms and we continue to translate more forms
into more languages, again, to provide to our court customers
so that they have the opportunity to access the services that we do provide.
Again, another example of diversity equity and inclusion.
We're here
today talking about diversity, equity and inclusion.
That's important.
The fact that we can add judicial council meeting,
have this discussion frankly, openly shows that we are interested
in this topic and we are interested in moving topic forward.
Again, another example of diversity, equity and inclusion.
We and we can go on to the next slide.
I think I want to point out that as part of some of the initiatives
we have in multiple districts at the state in the second and 10th
and in the fourth we do have diversity equity and inclusion specialists.
And I know that a number of them are here today, and I do want to specifically
point them out because they've been doing work, they've been doing excellent work.
And I believe they, in this form and in this space
deserve a call out for the great work that they've done
to provide access to the citizens of the state of Minnesota.
And those are Joleen Chestnut, who is the DEI
specialist for state court administration,
J.L. Macklemore, who
has been presenting today, who is a diversity
equity and inclusion specialist, or DEI manager in the forth.
And there's Xiangyang, who I believe is also here from the Forth.
And then in the second in 10th, we do have Brittney Dennis, who's not here.
But again, this is an example of the branch
and districts having the ability to push this forward.
Now we recognize in the second and I know in the fourth
that not every district has the resources to have a specialist.
However, you don't need a specialist to do the work right.
So if we have the value of DEA and we have a plan
from the state moving down, we can do this work.
So again, I them for their work.
But again, there's more work to be done.
We can move forward.
I think I was able to go through three or four slides at once.
Always very go,
did that as well.
All right.
Next slide, please.
And I know I talked about the third
judicial district in there, jury pilot.
Again, I do want to point out the fourth judicial district
and we're going to go forward, please and their continuance for dismissal.
Pilot
This is an example of how
diversity equity and inclusion and valuing that empowers our staff
to think creatively about ways that we can serve our public.
This is an idea that came from a staff member in the fourth
in which he was saying
what he saw was a bit of a disparity
in how individuals were getting continuance for dismissals.
And that disparity was that if you could not afford to pay
for continuous for dismissal, you didn't get it right.
So it was people who had the means to pay that were able to get
these types of benefits to keep them off of the record,
which of course for driving offenses,
it has a number of consequences, whether it's insurance or other things.
So a member of the Forth saw that as an issue
and thought about what a pilot project that we can do to
perhaps level that playing field have a more equitable way
to access the ability to have it continuous for dismissal.
And they developed and he developed this process
to allow for everyone to have a continuous free dismissal.
It was a leveling playing field in which
it he identified or the fourth identified a
an amount that
folks would pay that was not based on which district
or which city you lived in and whether you lived in Minnetonka
or whether you lived in Minneapolis forever.
Each and individual, regardless of have an opportunity.
Again, I think this points out one
diversity equity inclusion as it relates to us as a practice.
But also I think it more importantly points out that when we have this
as a value, it trickles to our staff and they feel empowered to think
about creative ways to solve problems that we have in the court.
And then they bring those forward because they feel empowered
to bring those forward.
And then we are providing more access to justice
and access to fair justice because the staff is engaged
and the staff is working with us to make this happen.
So that is what this is an example of and we can move forward
again.
I think we'll move forward.
There is, again,
initiatives at the Court of Appeals as it relates to improving law clerk
recruitment around the affinity law groups to again
increase the diversity of our law clerk pool.
And the same is happening at the Supreme court.
So I think now, because we've been going for quite a bit of time, is a good time
to open it up for questions for the last couple of sections that we've had.
Are there any questions before we move forward,
questions from the counsel about what you've heard so far
as the judge?
BRITELL
Yeah, just curious on this fourth
District continues for dismissal policy,
I don't need name, but who who had the idea?
Was it a staff person?
Was it a lawyer?
Was it a judge staff person? Okay.
That launched?
I do not.
Let's see. No, it has not.
It's going to be launching. Is that correct?
Yes, It's going to be really interesting to see.
I mean, we want to make sure we get updates on that.
I think that's a really interesting, innovative idea.
We regularly solicit views
of staff members who have, frankly, the best ideas, oftentimes
because they're in the trenches, they're seeing this on a regular basis.
So we solicit their views every year, frankly,
and give awards out called the Spark Competition.
And they provide incredibly insightful, transformative recommendations.
That is really one of the strengths of us being a statewide system, is that we
we have districts who come up with really interesting ideas
and then they pilot them
and we learn from those pilots, and then we're able to export the idea
around the state.
So it'll be really interesting to get that feedback from that pilot as well.
As, you know, the other pilots that are going on,
including the one in the third on the jury selection.
So yeah, I'm really glad you brought that up.
Other questions from the council about what you've heard so far.
Okay.
All right.
So we've talked about Minnesota and how exceptional we are.
And now we want to put that
exceptionalism in context of the rest of the country.
And we're going to really talk about
nationally what's happening around diversity, equity and inclusion.
And I will be doing that with.
All right.
Well, so as you'll see on the slide,
just some some images of things that the National Center for State Courts
has been working on for a while that may touch upon some of this.
For example, the
graphic up in the upper left corner
has to do with state courts as organizations
and our court statistics project.
If you don't have data, then it's very difficult to identify
certain problem areas,
not just problem areas.
Even your positive areas definitively. And
you'll be hampered by
trying to determine where you should go.
You know, you'll be you'll somewhat be stuck with that,
dealing with the squeaky wheel and other things.
There you see the graphic.
We do all sorts of things at the National Center.
You'll see the graphic of the states.
They're using software called Tableau.
We have a similar graphic on the racial justice Web page
at the National Center where you can click and see what other states are doing.
And we populate it that
those fields so that someone can easily go and see.
Well, I've got a, you know, brother, sister or cousin relative, whoever that.
Yeah, while I'm in Minnesota, they live in Texas.
So I'm curious as to what's going on in Texas and and people inherently compete
against one another just to see, well, how are we doing compared to other people?
We know how well we're doing, but how well are we doing against some of our peers?
And then there's this other information out there on that slide,
just some considerations.
You know, you'll see systemic change, guiding principles there.
That's one of the things that grew out of our blueprint for racial justice.
You know, we talk about making changes.
We don't want just the window dressing if.
We decide to if we're going to make changes at all.
We want those changes to be baked into the system.
We call that systemic.
Some people call this institutionalizing the change so that it's just there.
It will outlive us.
The way we do business now is baked in it.
Many of the processes that we follow,
any of the policies, even some of our laws,
you know, go back hundreds of years.
And so those things are institutionalized.
They are systemic, they're there.
They were put in for a reason based upon the thinking and ideation as the time.
So as we evolve,
we recognize that sometimes you have to make adjustments
and there's nothing wrong with making those adjustments.
You know, So you can see they're collecting race related data.
If you don't have it, then you really can't say
definitively one way or the other that they're you may be doing well
in a particular area or not
so well and another in another if you don't have that information.
Next slide, please.
Again, thank you.
So the blueprint for racial justice, the blueprint is not a document.
It's it's it's not a book
or anything, if you're familiar with construction.
Right.
The blueprint is is is this collection of sketches and drawings
that people who are engineers and architects
and designers would have put these things together
so that when the trades craft persons get to work doing the work
they're operating from essentially what would be the same sheet of music.
And so in this context, for our course,
the the blueprint and the people who developed the blueprint are you,
you're the blueprint, you're the trades craft person.
Do you know what you're doing?
You know what needs to be fixed if anything needs to be fixed
to particular areas, your collection of thoughts and ideas go into the
and then ultimately you produce voila these adjustments and changes
around your system that reflect the ideals of the Minnesota judicial branch.
We created the Blueprint for Racial Justice as a collection
of probably about 160 people now or so
from all over country.
These people who participate were nominated or recommended by the Chief
Justice of their state and or the state court administrator of the state,
who they thought would be a value
add to the initiative.
And so we have these different committees.
We developed all of these resources that are on the Web page, and these people
have brought in their perspectives, their
experiences to help craft
overall what we call the blueprint.
Again, it's not a single document, it's not a single
booklet or anything like that.
It's just a collection of people really, who have added
their thoughts, opinions, perspectives into various areas
that we crisscross and address within the blueprint for racial justice.
Next slide.
So here you'll see that
a number of states and in particular courts within
excuse me, courts within particular states have their own DTI
vision statements.
Not everyone does this because quite frankly,
in some jurisdictions they hadn't quite felt the need to
memorialize their thoughts and discussions
and post them and make them public.
You'll see courts like it in Alameda, Northern California.
They have their statement there.
You'll see some many of the statements will specifically talk about impartiality
or integrity or trust or equality
and dare all you know, the word diversity will be in there.
You look at Bentonville, Arkansas,
for one district court there.
They've got a number of different statements within there.
They bullet point there's out and you'll see more of this as we go in.
Next slide, please.
Florida.
Now, some people will say, oh, my gosh, are you are you serious?
Like Florida really has a statement?
Yes They do.
And they're very serious about it, irrespective
of some of the politics that we often hear or see on television.
And this is a new statement.
This is as of last month, April 20, 23.
So this isn't some old stuff.
And now there's been
some changes afoot that this doesn't apply.
And I think it's important to understand this simply
because there are differences of opinion
does not negate the fact that the people
that you might have differences with don't believe
that they're doing the
right thing or that they want to ultimately see the right thing.
Sometimes the the challenge in getting to
whatever that goal is or outcome is that you have very intelligent,
very smart people who just see different pathways.
Right?
So one of the things that is very important
for our judicial branches is that we're small, small yet mighty.
And my wife says that five feet tall or 411, really, but,
you know, small but mighty.
And we have to be a bit
more nimble than sometimes other branches, because there are ways
that we must frame the work that we do in our positions.
That's often a bit more quiet
than maybe the other two branches.
And that's okay.
Next slide.
So if you look at even Maryland have District
one of their district courts
there, their particular statement, one of the things that I found interesting
was to talk in the second paragraph about the sworn obligation
of the judges of the court to ensure that every case tried here in
is adjudicated expeditiously, courteously and according
to law with the fullest protection for rights of all who are involved.
And it goes on and on and on and on.
And sometimes you don't
have to necessarily if you decide to develop these statements,
it doesn't
always have to be very long or wordy.
It while that may be good for us,
for the layperson, sometimes the word you know,
you might you might want to think plain language
because for some of them they're like, what are they talking about?
If they even read this stuff?
Next slide.
And then the National Center itself, you know, one of the things that comes up
and I've been asked, well, you know, anywhere in the world,
you know, the National Center is out here, you know, representing courts.
And we do to some degree.
I mean, the courts are our ball.
So, you know, we're in a unique organization, right?
We we are essentially governed by the chief justices
and the state court administrators. They tell us what to do.
Yes, we have a mighty leader in Mary McQueen who marches us forward,
but we like to follow philosophy such as this.
And I'll read our our statement for the National Center
by fostering a culture of inclusion and equity,
the National Center for State Courts, and establishing goals
that support diversity, we demonstrate
a model of excellence and leadership and service to our workforce
and to the state courts Within our organization.
We align our behaviors and competencies with our focus on diverse representation,
a culture of inclusion and equitable practices
that define who we are and what we do.
You know, some of these are aspirational.
This is what we wish to get to.
This is what we think we're doing.
And so that's our statement there, and that's important to us as an organization.
It's like
now some states have take it upon themselves to develop
strategic plans, specifically in the area
of diversity, equity, inclusion.
Those states such as Delaware,
you know, Delaware went so far
as to try to identify how they could
better diversify their bar.
You know, the chief justice there and others said, you know,
why is our bar look the way it does?
Why doesn't it better reflect
the lay of the land in our particular state?
And they took some steps to to analyze it
and and came up with some solutions, developed a plan.
Michigan. Michigan has a plan.
They're actively working to develop a new strategic plan.
They've had a change in top level leadership with their chief justice,
but they're still pushing forward to figure out,
okay, here's what we've done in the past,
how can we improve upon that?
It's sort of like if you're familiar, it's people like me.
I mean, I don't have an MBA.
So, you know, in business school, you learn about, you know,
the Japanese automakers like continuous improvement, right.
And we hear about it a lot now with Chinese manufacturers who make
slowly, you know, make improvements and things just get better.
It's not always these huge landslide changes.
Sometimes it's their small iterations
that over a period of time make the things that you do better.
And then you have New Hampshire, New Hampshire.
They've developed their own strategic plan.
We're actively working now to implement their plan in various ways.
So there's a lot going on. Next slide, please.
The same holds true for states
like New Jersey that have been at this for a very long time themselves.
One thing that I will tell you sometimes, because you've worked on
for a long time,
because it becomes sort of rudimentary and people feel as
though your work can be stale and everything needs a refresh.
So New Jersey is always working to sort of refresh the work that they've been doing
for 30 or 40 years or even longer.
And then you jump in look at Washington state there,
they had their own commissions and their consortium.
They're always working to make improvements.
So that their system is is fair and more fair
to the people who utilize it there in the state of Washington
and us.
And then with this, the National Conference of Juvenile Family
Court Judges.
I would just encourage folks on your own to listen to this statement.
Again, this just talks about the importance of DEA and the judiciary,
the number of judges from across the country really discussing that issue.
This came about in 2000 when, you know, I don't know
there was something happening and, you know, it was covered in other things.
And there was this new and this new push on on racial justice
and that out of that push, the National Conference for Juvenile
and Family Court Judges partnered with the National Center for State Courts
and a number of other organizations to create a coalition
to specifically address and discuss the issues.
Racial justice.
Out of that, the National Conference of Juvenile and Family Court justices,
just judges, really took a step back and said
it's not just racial justice that we need to focus on,
but we need to take a step back and look at diversity, equity and inclusion overall
in providing equal access and equal justice to all.
And this was the offshoot of that.
So rather than play that, because I don't know if you can
plus I do want to to the discussion portion,
I would encourage folks to just take a listen to that.
I think it's about a four minute or so video and I think you would enjoy that.
Next slide.
Next slide. They think it's you, Antoine.
Thank you.
So the goal through report that the ABA produced
just gives some information, especially demographic information
regarding the leadership and the members
of of the American Bar Association.
And it's a it's important.
It's a snapshot. Right.
We saw a similar snapshot about Minnesota's judicial branch.
But it just gives you a visual as to this.
So certainly nationally where you might
compare yourselves
nationally to two other states and obviously this is a collective
this is an annual report of the board of governors
the House of Delegates, talks about presidential appointments
and then member practice groups, because obviously in certain practices,
you you might able to easily identify shifts in diversity
or differences in diversity depending on the type of practice.
Right?
There might be a particular practice that focuses on white collar crime
versus the demographic outlook on
on those members who practice family law.
It may look very different, the people who are involved in that.
So for you to take a look at that report, we have to.
Excellent. Thank you.
So I talked about earlier this was one of the
graphics on one of the earlier slides,
state court organization dashboard
is an active dashboard that anybody can go in and look at,
includes information on judicial officer, gender, race and ethnicity.
It's a
detailed, comprehensive information
web page
that's always being updated with information.
Again, if you if you are just interested at looking
at what's happening around the country, take a look.
There are a lot of things that the National Center puts together
that while may not directly impact
your work every day, I think it's important for you to know
because it allows for you to have
a more robust and wider perspective as to
how you and I say you as a state fit the world.
And our world is certainly just being the United States of America.
Next slide, please.
And here sort of shift it
that we talk about the initiatives you had recently.
And I say recently inside of the past three years,
a number of of states that have created
particular offices or positions
generally, either at their state Supreme Court
or at their state court administrator office level,
and they've a person or a group of people who's responsible ATI
is to understand, develop, critique, produce
materials for the branch
pertaining to to DTI in their name, different things.
One, for example, here in Utah, it's called the Office
of Fairness and Accountability.
I don't get hung up on words and terminology.
I get hung up on the work that that gets done,
and there's lots of work that gets done.
But in certain places you've got to change the words that you use.
That's just being upfront with you.
You've got to make adjustments to the words
because, you know, we've got these huge I have a huge dictionary at home
that I bought years ago that I would
offer to my children to read
so that they could build their vocabulary
and so that they could see that they're, you know, definitions.
And then you have to, you know, look at different
there's there's more than one way to do things.
There's more to one way to describe the work that you're doing.
Next slide, please.
The next bench in the court
workforce will jump into
a portal that we've created
through the Blueprint for Racial Justice,
and it's called core Court
Opportunity Recruitment for All.
So this particular the portal that we've created
was our response to Oscar.
So if you or if you've applied for a law clerk position
through the federal court system, those applicants must apply through Oscar.
So since we work in government,
we all come up with these acronyms and we came up with Quora.
And so the purpose of Quora
is to as a state here, to identify and promote these opportunities
internships, internships, clerkships, also jobs, regular jobs as well.
That may not require law, a law license or a law degree.
And we're trying to just connect people
because it's very easy to say, well,
our jobs are already on our website or whether it's the state website
or if I'm in a district court, maybe we also put jobs on on that.
The counties within our district, I don't know how that works
or maybe we use indeed, or CareerBuilder or whatever,
but if we're trying to reach people,
you know, and we're trying, we obviously the pandemic has done
a number on many of us with respect to
our personnel.
We've got to find people who want to work within our systems
and and sometimes are the way we've been
advertising positions and looking for for jobs.
While, yes, we do ultimately field them,
we can broaden
the reach and possibly bring in other applicants to be considered
who might not otherwise have known that these opportunities were available
because so
most opportunities are going to be time limited within a particular time.
We advertise the position once it's
falls off and our human resources does their thing and it's gone.
And so this particular portal, Quora
is is being promoted in a through
various law schools where we have courts that have agreed
to promote their positions.
It's being going to be promoted as we continue to work on it
through the summer to our historically black colleges and universities.
I mean, the first time I ever heard about Carlton in college,
it was the first three people they ever mentioned, Carlton College.
They were lawyers and they were black.
They had never heard of Carlton College before that
the first three times they ever heard about it, different states.
So I'm like, Oh wow, I would have never considered college and college.
I had never heard of Carlton Colleges.
Even though it is highly ranked in U.S.
News and World Report.
But we're going to promote this portal
in hopes that people will add to it.
You want something?
Maybe someone's in Alaska, They'd like to come here.
People have family everywhere.
I like to relocate.
You know, it doesn't always have to be part of diversity.
It's not just race, right?
It's not just gender.
Sometimes it's diversity of perspective.
Based on where you went to school.
Maybe you want
somebody who went to Emory in Atlanta give them an opportunity versus
someone who went to University of Minnesota.
A change.
So we'll move on to the next slide.
Now. Excuse me.
Yes, Kau is live.
And if there if you need to have a better understanding as to what you ought to do
or how to utilize that system, reach out to me.
We'll set up a a quick and easy meeting
because we want people to put their positions in there.
The push and I will tell you that we've gotten on using core
are being the people who are responsible for inputting because they feel like,
well, we've got a double input and that normally comes from an h.r.
Office like, oh, you know, their staff.
We got to input another a job again.
You know, we're already doing it in indy.
We're already doing it. Here's another thing.
Well Yes, you do.
And it ain't. It's not 1000 positions, okay?
Most of the time there's like two or three.
Like, it's not that difficult.
Like, so I'll push back.
That's the administrator. But thank you, Chief.
Where are we at here?
Massachusetts. So
Massachusetts is
an important state with respect to D-I initiatives,
in my opinion, because it is a branch wide effort.
The way that they are structured and organized and organized,
they have mandatory training.
And I know some people don't like mandatory of everyone
from their Supreme Judicial Court
on down.
And I don't mean down.
I know some people don't like this, but it's mandatory.
And so they have an office that works to produce,
coordinate and deliver training
of all types on all types of subjects
pertaining to diversity, equity, inclusion.
And that office also is responsible for coordinating community engagement.
One of the promising things about community
engagement is that's a form of communication.
If people don't know they're left
to their own devices to determine amongst themselves we're treating them.
And sometimes
it takes somewhat over communication
to ensure that our message is getting out
because there are other people for their own purposes that are producing
the messages about us in the courts that are not accurate.
And quite frankly, are not fair.
And so Massachusetts does a very fantastic job, not just in their home state,
their staff works with other state supreme courts,
state court administrator offices, and just local district
courts around the country to sort of train them on how to deliver
and to deliver the training methodologies
themselves and to also how to identify
challenging areas that might need a little assistance.
Next line.
All right.
So, of course, service improvement efforts,
there's all types I think a number of you might have seen,
and we'll start with fines and fees, might have seen the Dear Colleague letter
that came out,
I believe, several weeks ago from the Department of Justice.
I guess that really means that's
putting all of us on notice that there's going to be
some some review
of some sort, some examination
of how our courts address and fees.
And so this is a particular initiative.
The National Center
had a fines and fees task force.
It will be reconstituted in some form here
pretty soon, as I understand it internally,
because we just want to make sure that courts caught flat footed.
Again.
There's always the the important thing of the day
that comes up are the things kind of level off.
And so we want to ensure that our state courts
are doing what we're supposed to do.
And so we don't have the Department of Justice feeling
as though they need to peer into what we're doing at the state court level.
And then there's other improvement efforts.
They're increasing diversity again, the courts too, and the legal
professional profession generally.
Sentencing reform.
I saw something recently from another organization,
the Council on Criminal Justice, where Adam Gelb, who I know from Georgia,
is their CEO, talking about,
you know, what, sentences long enough.
That's debatable, right, depending on what the issue is.
So some sentences, in my opinion, aren't long enough.
Others just entirely too long, especially for those people who, you know
are coming, are getting out and coming back to our local communities.
Some other talk, they're improving pretrial that was briefly talked about.
I know you all have a tool available to you in this state and probation
assessing court system.
We talked about the racial justice organizational assessment tool
and exploring public health and public safety generally.
Next slide, please.
Judge Harris.
I believe that she sat
with the National Consortium for Racial Ethnic Fairness and the Court.
Minnesota has been participating in this for a number of years.
This is a a collection of states who at one point either had racial
bias task force or some type of commission to address racial bias.
And this serves as a clearinghouse for information, data
and best practices on how you address these issues.
I would note that as part of our participation,
and I think many know that we actually hosted
the National Consortium in 2018, we continue to be part of this.
And again, this is just one of a number of resources
we have utilize to continue our work around DTI.
And then lastly,
you know, we point out
those states that are actively doing things.
Nebraska is another great state,
great chief justice.
They're a great state court administrator.
I've met with them before.
You know, they established their Committee on Equity and Fairness,
I think it was originally called the Minority Justice Committee,
focused on some primary objectives.
And you need to have objectives when you're
deciding to create these bodies and groups.
But they wanted to address the racial disparities
in juvenile and adult criminal systems
in order to ensure equal access to justice.
And they want to increase the diversity, or at least looking at increasing
the diversity of the legal profession
and the work forces within the state of Nebraska judiciary.
And again, there are a number of ways to address
the multitude of issues
that might be occurring in your respective branch.
There is no one way you can be and I'll use these terms
as political or liberal as you want to be,
but just know that even though there are different ideologies and
and different thoughts on how you get to this ultimate outcome,
the fact that you're even considering it
and now for all of you here, actively working
to get to a particular place ought to be commended.
And I will say that the two you don't allow
some of the noise because there's lots of noise right now
specific to diversity, equity and inclusion
to derail your efforts.
Is it going to be a challenge moving forward? Yes,
it is. It's going to be a challenge.
You have to really monitor and be strategic
as I know you will in in charting your pathway forward.
But what I say is don't stop
doing the work that you've been doing
because the noise, it won't go away, but you won't.
You'll still be here.
Next line.
That's all I have.
Any particular question.
So I think that concludes the formal part of the presentation,
and I want to just take the floor for a minute to just thank our presenters.
Thank you, Judge and Edwin and Jill and Justice to Tish and Judge Kappel, Hoffman,
Dana and Katie, you didn't present, but I know you had a guiding hand here.
And really the planning workgroup and all those who worked on this presentation,
it really was an excellent presentation
and certainly time well spent for us on the Council.
These special topics are so valuable because they give us an opportunity
to learn and reflect and focus deeply on a topic
that is important to the branch and to us as the governing body of the branch.
I encourage all of you to take the presentation back
to your districts and your local courts and offices and share
good work with your judges and staff.
There is so much that we can and should be proud of in this area,
and it's important that we pause and recognize and celebrate all of that
hard work that we're undertaking to ensure equity and diversity in our courts.
Of course, one of the challenges that we face as a judiciary
when talking about diversity, equity and inclusion in our justice system
is that we can only control what we can control when we know
that we can't control the cases of people who come into our courts.
But our job is to serve all of those people equitably and fairly.
Everybody who walks into our doors must be treated equitably and fairly.
We can't control the makeup of who's appointed
or elected to serve on the bench, but we certainly recognize the importance
of a diverse representation in our judiciary.
So I think today's presentation did an excellent job
highlighting the comprehensive approach that we've been taking in Minnesota
to addressing areas that we can control.
That includes our work to encourage diverse applicants for our positions
and to support an inclusive hiring process, our commitment to customer focus
and to listening to what our court users want and need
to access within our system
our efforts to continuously assess our court performance
and to address disparities and take action when we're not meeting our standards
and the great work at both the state and local level to increase transparency
and trust in our courts through community education and outreach,
I believe that we should leave today's special topic
feeling inspired about how much we've achieved,
determined to sustain and build
on these important efforts and resolute in our commitment
to cultivating a diverse, equitable and inclusive court.
Sustaining and building on the work already underway is, to be sure, no
small task and will require regular focus
and ongoing support from this body.
That's why you're going to see our goals around diversity, equity
and inclusion featured so prominently in the FFA 24 operation
plan that we're going to be talking about later today.
It's important that we continue to dedicate the staff time and resources
necessary to support this work in the year ahead,
and I encourage all of us to help prioritize our work around diversity,
equity and inclusion by supporting these tasks in the operational plan.
Now, let me end where we began.
We began this this conversation some months ago with a recommendation
from the Strategic Planning Committee to add diversity, equity and inclusion
to our list of core values alongside equal justice
for all, public trust and confidence, innovation and collaboration.
During today's discussion, we heard suggested definitions for the terms,
diversity, equity and inclusion, and that's what we asked for.
And I think the Council should talk about those definitions.
I think it was on Slide nine
and see if we can
support them and support adding them to our core values.
And I welcome that discussion and I'm going to stop talking now
and I'm eager to hear
from all of you your feedback and any questions that you might have.
So that's enough for me and I'll just open it up to all of you.
Somebody has to go first.
Just we're not
you want to put the slide up?
I think with the definitions, maybe it's page slide nine.
So with those definitions in mind, is the council supportive of adding
diversity, equity and inclusion to our core values statement?
Yes, I'm seeing consensus.
Lots of heads nodding yes.
We tell you just you know, I think we really should be moving this direction.
The demographics are moving in this direction.
We want a high quality workforce
and we want a lot of voices at the table
for us to do the work because we are in a very diverse workforce
and the public is looking at us for equal justice under the law.
And we've got to we've got to meet those high ideals in
and by meaning to do that, we got to do this work internally,
whether it's through recruiting and retraining, promotion
and just continuing to reassess what we're doing, what we're doing, good, bad.
And in between.
And a lot of times that takes data.
We got to
we've got to keep doing
the data piece here because we all have our own little viewpoint, right?
We're we're all diverse in our own ways.
And what I see in my courthouse is not all of us have more hair than others.
For example, if
I, I, I went to law school for a reason.
But I do think that this is
this is a good goal that we need to promote,
and I'm in full favor of it.
Other thoughts comments from Judge
Castro can can I get an idea what's our next step?
What do we do next
to get this done?
And we can adopt those definitions.
But what do we do next?
I think you're going to see in the operational plan
a lot more specifics around these topics that we're going to see
on the agenda later today.
And so that that so agreeing with the operational plan and then
really committing to getting those tasks done, I think will be a great next step.
I don't know, Jeff, you want to you want to add to that?
Well, I'll just say,
you know, talking to Edwin and looking at what other states are doing,
this whole section that we just talked about,
what we're already doing, I mean, we're doing a lot of stuff.
We need to continue it and prioritize it.
I think this sends a message by putting this in our core values.
But We've got a great committee on Equality
and Justice, chaired by Judge Byers and Justice Turek.
They're going to come forward with their own plan for the year.
So I think we need to take a look at that as we
decide what we're going to prioritize for the next biennium.
So I think we're doing a lot already myself
that's is Anderson.
I just want to express my appreciation to the committee
and for not only our internal committee, but the committee presentation here today.
And I want to particularly call out slides nine and ten is very helpful
and an acknowledgment that
there are conflicting viewpoints on some of this
and some of the public commentary.
Perhaps, you know, broadly speaking,
some it's helpful, some of it isn't, and it complicates
some of the important work that we do here.
And I thought acknowledging
the way language is sometimes used is was really helpful.
And I appreciated the presentation.
Thank you, Mr.
Sanderson. Other civil.
Yeah. Thank you for. The presentation.
Great work.
And and we have
been doing the work and I think it's important
seeing the data lines there going the wrong in terms of building trust.
And they're really stark when it comes down to
racial
and ethnic lines and the trust that the court has.
So I think for building our credibility and in that
we need to name it in these definitions.
So we're also really helpful in terms of making
sure it's in inclusive language
as opposed to, as Justice Anderson said, building
more exclusion because it's
things are so political these days.
So so I really appreciate it.
Thank you.
Other arts
questions.
EDGE Yes.
No, I couldn't tell if there was movement over there.
All right.
So there's consensus of the
oh, there's movement right here and some dance there.
You're just very close.
Oh, this was
the first special topic for many of us on the council.
I understand they were utilized prico levied.
And thanks for the presentation.
This was a great way to kick off special topics with Judicial Council again.
Now that we're moving past COVID
and on behalf of the Strategic Planning Committee
and all their great hard work,
and given the clarity that we've been today, to really
build a common understanding as we move forward
to make the judicial branch even better than it already is,
I strongly encourage us to adopt
as a core value diversity, equity and inclusion.
Thank you, Judge Lawson.
And I think there's consensus
and perhaps unanimity around the room that we should do exactly as you suggest.
So we'll see that one when we
formally approve the strategic plan, we can see that included there.
Other
thoughts on.
So I have a question about the racial justice organizational assessment tool.
And it seems like that came out in March of this year.
Is that right?
That is correct, yeah.
Have you gotten any
feedback yet on on how it's working?
I mean, not not from our
the recently launched version.
Not yet.
We had gotten feedback as we were developing it and we've tested
in a few places that will shall remain nameless
because it is an anonymous tool
to improve,
but maybe add some questions in certain areas
where but again, it just depended on who was answering the questions.
That tool is such that it really requires it is groupthink.
So it requires a core group of people
who are in the know about whether it's the system overall
or if you if it were at the district court level who really understand that.
So, you know, obviously the chief judge of the district court or the chief
justice designee, the court administrator,
probably human resources, if you have your own human resources,
a group of people who understand how the court functions and operates and
and has been around, I'd say, long enough to have seen and heard some things
to be able to answer the questions.
And so our hope is as we receive the feedback, because we do have a
a pathway where courts,
those who have been responsible for administering the tool
to report back to us and then we have an advisory committee
while identifying the court,
we can take the information provided and make some determinations
as to where additional adjustments need to be made to the tool.
So it's still fairly new.
It's been disseminated.
I believe the only data we get is that someone is using the tool.
We can't tell it is.
And that was done on purpose because some researchers
will want to know.
We believe we have about 26 or 27 courts
actively in the tool using it.
So it'll be it'll be while I think before we get some strong feedback,
but hopefully in the next 90 to 180 days,
we'll have sufficient feedback to make some determinations as to
how to adjust it and continue moving forward.
It just seems like another interesting way
to kind of self-reflection where we're at, maybe something the C.J.
would look at, look at or I don't know,
that is interesting, and it'll be interesting to see
if it's revised or updated at all once you get some feedback.
Oh, it will. Yeah, it will, certainly.
Thank you,
John.
Other questions or comments from the Council for any of our presenters,
anything from you, Jeff,
or any parting comments,
maybe I shouldn't have offered that
asking a lawyer to talk.
I know my,
my parting comments is that I'm
a smart man and I know not to stand between people on their watch.
So I appreciate this discussion.
And again this idea around diversity, equity and inclusion
is that we are doing it.
We need to call it out.
So the public understands
that because that's going to help us with public trust and confidence.
And as just as Anderson said, let's not
get confused and hung up on words.
We need to get hung up on the actions.
What are we doing to provide equal justice?
So I appreciate that you guys are going to pass this
as a value because is a value.
It's been a value will continue to be a value.
But I urge this group that now that it will be a value,
that we put the work behind the values so that we can continue
to provide access to folks.
But thank you for the limited questions.
And I'm going to head back to Ramsey County now.
Well, thank you again.
And Jeff advises that lunch
is here, so why don't we just lunch until about 1230?
Okay.
All right.
Thank you. Weren't in on a break.
Morning and.
All right, Are we ready to go?
Okay.
Thank you, Judge Lawson.
Yeah.
We're going to go ahead and get back to our agenda.
Item number three is a discussion item.
And Heather is here to present the Ohi quarterly report.
Welcome. I guess not. Welcome.
You've been here all along.
I have, but thank you, Chief.
I am here to give you
a quarterly update today.
I am Heather Kendall.
I'm the district administrator in the Second Judicial District.
I'm the co-chair of the Warren Court Minnesota Hearing Initiative.
Along with Judge Merrick.
She sends her regards.
She is off judging today and couldn't here.
We're going to go through a whole number of things with you today.
We are going to tell you a little bit
more about some of the analysis that we've doing related to the policy.
525 chart.
We are going to talk to you a little bit
about some changes to the deviation process.
And we are going to give you a little sneak preview of some of the data
that we've collected so far and talk about some of the things on the horizon.
All right.
So by way of reminder, back in August,
you all gave us a charge that was very, very helpful.
It really has us to continually look at this chart,
examine it, and determine if any changes are needed.
And if they are, we bring them to you and we're able to make those
amendments as we need to.
So thank you for that.
So in response to some of the
feedback we received from all of you in November,
we decided to do a little bit of a deeper dive into some of the areas
in the non-criminal hearing chart,
and we wanted to see if any additional changes needed to be made in addition
to the ones that we made back in November and all of you agreed to.
So you can see in the slide here there are five different areas
that we took a look at.
I'm going to talk to you about each one of those areas.
Really, what we wanted to do is
take a deeper dive, see if there's anything
that was significant enough to bring back to all of you.
In terms of a change,
I am happy to report haven't found anything.
So today, really, we just want to take you through our analysis.
All right.
Let's start with
some of the hearing types that may or may not be missing
from the presumptive chart.
So our first area of focus for these hearing types,
we wanted to see what was missing
and really kind of determined
what we needed to do to make any changes there.
We were pleasantly surprised to find that the chart captured
all but a few regularly used hearing types,
So we knew from the beginning there might be a couple missing,
but we were pleased to find out that there weren't that many.
As a point of reference.
There are 70 active hearing types
in Memphis and 100 active case types,
so there's lot going on there
and we knew that and well, I should say we knew that.
But what we've concluded is that having an exhaustive list
is probably not feasible.
And so that's one of the reasons we decided not to take any action
in terms of adding some of those hearing types back onto the list.
We know this is a time of transition and we really believe
it's maybe best to kind of stay the course
and let everyone adjust to the change before we do anything different.
So that's what we did here.
On the missing hearing types.
If you want to see
what hearing types are not on the chart, you can look in the appendix.
The other kind of positive about having a hearing type
that is not on the chart IS it does allow you to do whatever you feel
like you need to do and then it allows Ohio to capture that data.
So when there's not a presumptive,
you know, outline for you what happens.
And so we can measure that.
And so I think that's valuable information to have.
All right.
Then we took a look at hearing types that may need alignment
or maybe out of alignment with census.
What we found here is that
we were able, for the most part, to align all of our hearing types
within us, in our case types, within Memphis, which is great news.
The only one that we found that was used
regularly that is not
if that's on the chart, but not in Memphis are contempt hearings.
So this is a hearing type we use all the time.
Maybe I should say case we use all the time, but
it's not actually configured in Memphis. So
what we
can tell from there is just that there's not much we can do about that.
We don't recommend a change to the chart.
We do believe that contempt should be in person.
The data tells us that seems to be how all of you are doing that.
The feedback we've heard,
I shouldn't say data
because we can't actually pull anything from this list,
but that's what we've heard from all of you.
So it seems to be working well.
So our recommendation here is just
to stay the course
scheduling practice modifications.
So what we heard here are there are reports that we run
and we share with the districts on occasion.
And what it shows us is how often we're aligned with the policy.
525 chart and when we're not.
And what we were finding is that in juvenile matters, juvenile
delinquency matters specifically how case was scheduled
versus how it was occurred, it might start off, for example,
as an initial hearing, and then it may move into a disposition.
And so that was causing some problems on this report
that we were sharing with the districts.
So thankfully, that issue was limited to juvenile
and we've actually juvenile from the policy 525 chart.
So this issue becomes moot, So
no further action needed there. So
all right,
then we looked at delineation of hearing types.
So there were two parts here
that we looked at when we were talking about delineating hearing types,
and that had to do the first had to do with complex
civil matters and the second had to do with housing.
So let's start with complex civil.
What we heard from people is within the major civil umbrella,
there are cases that are complex, but then there are cases that are really,
really complex, you know, and you know that difference,
but it is hard to pinpoint.
And so we took a deep dive in there to
is there some way we could separate out
those really, really complex cases?
And how and if so, how would we do that?
So what we did, we looked at
there is a complex civil case designation.
It's outline and rule.
It's available in Memphis.
And we thought, okay, great, here's the perfect way.
Well, we found that as a branch, we've only
used that five times or so
in the past year.
So that's not going to be our answer.
So as we were looking through the analysis, we could not find
a clean, logical way, especially from a data standpoint, to separate those cases.
However, when we came to last November,
we brought to you the idea that we should make civil trials, major
civil pre trials, major civil settlement conferences, move those to in person.
So we made that change.
Court trials are already in-person.
Jury trials are in person.
So I think since then we haven't heard
that same type of feedback because really what in the major civil umbrella,
those kind of quick review hearings, scheduling conferences, those are remote.
And then these cases, these hearing types where they're intended for settlement
or trial or whatever the might be, those are in person.
So we haven't heard a ton more feedback on this.
So at this time, we're suggesting that we just
keep everything as is is complex, major civil,
but it is something we'll keep an eye on and we'll keep having discussions
with all of you about.
Because if there is some way in the future to kind of make
that distinction, we're very open to that
housing.
We have a little bit of an issue there because if you remember on the chart,
there is one designation for housing.
It's eviction and so it's unlawful detainer.
But as we know, we also have rent escrows, we have lockouts,
and those aren't specifically called out on the chart.
And so some people were asking us what should we do?
And really the intention is for all of housing to be remote.
So people were saying,
should you just put all of those different case types onto the chart?
We have the same reasoning as before really on this one,
we thought might just
muddy the waters to start to add those different case types to the chart.
At this point in time, we are finding through the data
that these really are happening remotely
and we were getting some feedback
that that seems to be working pretty well in most cases.
So and also another hiccup here as it relates to housing
is that some of those case types are not in Memphis.
So we're just we're calling them civil other.
And so there's really no way to even make a true distinction
from a data standpoint.
So those are the reasons why we're, you know,
kind of suggesting that we maintain the status quo there.
One last nuance in this section,
we did have the child support program
come ask us if content could be removed from the presumptive chart in Ex-Pro
and also footnote that would just explain the people that support paternity family.
Other dissolution with the child are all encompassed in Ex-Pro.
So we really
do agree that's a helpful distinction to make for folks.
So we're going to work on educating and then any charts in the future
list those out separately.
So that's what we had on that.
Then we turned our attention to O.f PS and O's.
We heard feedback there that there's just more work.
We should take a deeper dive into this remember, and of PS and euros
we do have that nice Asterix at evidentiary
hearing really allows the judicial officer to make the determination because it's
based on where the judicial officer is located.
So that gives a lot of flexibility and discretion.
People have been finding that helpful.
But to supplement our data, we worked with Maria Garza,
who serves as the domestic and sexual violence analyst at ASCO,
to develop a survey to gather statewide data
from justice partners and court
customers related to offices in general.
And we were able to gather
they were able to gather some feedback
from OSP in general filers and service providers.
And what they shared with us is
remote hearings provide more physical
and emotional safety to victims than in-person hearings.
Again, this is from the perspective of those filers and some of the providers,
and that people are feeling like
that's just a bit more accessible to them.
We are data showing that the bulk
majority of these are held remotely.
So the data and the feedback at this point are aligned.
I know this is a polarizing issue,
but that's what we're finding so far.
But we don't believe at this point that any change be made
to how the chart is designated.
I think that Asterix gives everyone
that kind of ability to maneuver things however
you see fit, because the judicial officers in the best position
to know how a hearing should occur in those cases. So
we do not recommend any changes at this.
Then I next say you want to turn your attention
to one area where we have made a change in that is to the deviation process.
We've heard feedback that
when judicial officers are making a designation
to change something from the presumption to a different format,
that doing that by either a written order or a verbal order can be cumbersome.
And so we've expanded that.
It can happen through an email to your court administration
staff, it can happen through a task manager task.
We really wanted to broaden that because again, you all are in the best position
to know when these changes from the presumptions need to occur.
So now the court staff still need to document that minutes.
This this is still a part of our evaluation.
We really want to know
why these deviations are happening, because that will help inform us
and makes it will help us make some long term recommendations.
So that part hasn't changed.
But we did want to share that.
We did make some of these changes hopefully will make your lives easier.
And also coming soon is a video,
informal video that will tell you more about that process
and hopefully some helpful and tricks to make that easier for everyone.
All right, let's talk data.
So since December, we have been asking litigants, attorneys
and other hearing participants to provide feedback about their hearing experiences.
You've probably seen some of those Zoom redirects.
That's what is.
We also now have posters in our courtrooms and some QR codes in chief.
I'm sorry, I don't know what that stands for.
And it's the little box that you can put and use your phone.
But we have those to make
that access to that survey a little bit easier.
So I to share what
we've found so far, I do want to say this is preliminary.
So my disclaimer is if if you're going to ask me to slice and
dice this into a million different pieces, we can't do that right now.
All we have is super high level information.
But when this wraps up, we'll give it to you in all sorts of different ways.
So more to come.
But here's what we know so far.
Right now.
As of April 26th, we have collected thousands of responses,
which is great news.
And what we're hearing, again, this one
primarily focuses on the litigants and the attorneys and the court partners.
So what we've learned so
at the very highest level, about 80% so far
that have attended hearings during this time period,
say they would prefer to attend their hearing remotely.
About 20% have said that they would prefer
to attend a future hearing in person
now. So we asked why?
Why would you rather attend
your hearing remotely?
You'll see here on the screen
some different quotes that we've collected from people.
But the themes are this and they're not terribly new to us.
We've heard this before, but it helps them save time.
Attorney Time Parking fees
in some litigants and part participants mentioned
just feeling safer at home
for either for not being exposed to the other party
and some just related to illness, not wanting to be around other people.
We asked the same question for those that
prefer to appear in person, why did they prefer that?
And basically those folks themes
where they prefer face to face communication
they prefer or they felt like the communication between the parties
and between the parties, their attorneys was better.
They felt that in person
was more conductive to
feeling it was a serious matter in a serious situation.
And then, of course, they some expressed some anxiety around technology.
So it's not surprising either
way, but helpful to hear feedback.
And we asked what makes it difficult
for you to attend your remote hearing?
What, if anything?
And so what we heard here, we're very encouraged
by the fact that 70 said that it wasn't difficult.
Those others that said they had some struggles.
What we're
hearing from them is it might have just been
some technology was difficult
to use taking time off of work, which would apply to in-person and remote.
So this is just one of the ways we're starting get feedback.
It's been great to kind of hear from our court users.
We will also administer our Access and Fairness survey this fall,
and although that will of course focus on its traditional role of,
you know, learning more about people's perception of fairness, equity,
but it will also help us to understand the hearing experience.
I think there's an opportunity there to move off that one juror.
I mean, I just think it's remarkable that only 33%
indicated technology was different.
Yeah, that's really worth noting.
Yeah, absolutely.
Great technology.
It's hard to know.
But we're we're doing what we can to learn more here.
Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.
And then wrapping up just a few things we wanted
to highlight that we're working on right now,
coming soon, judicial officer and staff focus groups.
So we're going meet with
all of you.
We're going to get your feedback.
We really want to hear about what helps in terms of your wellbeing
and how that is impacted.
So we're going to learn more about that and of course, hearing related factors.
And so we want to learn as much as we can from all of you and our staff.
And then to complement that, of course, we'll be doing a survey
of judicial officers and staff in late
23 about their hearing experiences.
Then we're also going to be doing a resources and practices study.
This is really focused on the day
to day practices related to hearings.
This is not a judicial way to caseload.
This is not a staff weighted caseload.
This isn't going to tell us timing,
but really what it's going to do is focus on practices.
What are we finding to be most effective?
What are we finding to be most efficient
so that is we've done some preliminary work
on that and more to come here in the next month or so.
We have selected some counties to gather information from.
We've tried to have a wide sampling.
So we have large, small rural or rural metro, the whole gamut.
So you'll hear more about then we have our Department
of Corrections scheduling
pilot.
We acknowledge that it is
very difficult to coordinate with the Department of Corrections.
We I think we've mentioned to you at this point we have a solution in mind.
Our teams are meeting here
the next couple of weeks to really talk through the pilot.
And it's going to be we're really excited about this one.
Think of how you reserve a table online when you go out to dinner.
As funny as that sounds, that's kind of what it looks like.
You know, you pick your date, pick your time, pick your hearing length,
and then we're able to coordinate with those different dock facilities.
So we're excited about that.
And I've already mentioned the policy 525
deviations of video that's coming to you here soon.
And that sums it up, Really.
Take today's just a quick update on what we're doing.
We thank you all for your leadership.
We know this is hard, but we appreciate the ongoing dialog and the feedback.
That's all I had.
Chief
information to use
and right
and record.
Oh, there it is. Yes.
Yeah. Okay. It's cash flow.
Is there a different weighted caseload
for complex civil?
Not to my I would name some of my
weighted caseload folks.
We don't have Grant here today or SIGGRAPH.
I might explain why it's not being used.
Right.
Oh you're talking about, you know.
Yeah.
So just think I don't know that everyone knows about it.
I mean, I think it's
about a different way to caseload.
We would, Yeah.
Yeah, it's worthy.
We're doing a little more research on that, I think.
Yeah,
Well, thank you, Heather.
That's very helpful.
You're on I for
this is a decision which is a decision item at our last meeting.
Jen Super proposed amendments to judicial Council policy, six or five
that are aimed at broadening the policies purpose to include
personal safety, physical security and emergency preparedness.
And let's see, we talked about that last week.
Are there. Where's Jen?
Oh, she's right there. Look at her. There she is.
Hi, Jen.
You hear us?
But we had a
hello. I apologize.
I've lost my audio.
I cannot hear you. Oh.
Oh, not sure what we're going to do about that.
Well, hopefully nobody has any questions for Jen.
Yeah, she's part of the 3%.
Yeah, Very funny, Judge Castro.
Well done.
But I'm Bob.
Hopefully nobody has any questions for Jen.
So the the amendments are in your materials.
And really, at this point,
I would entertain a motion to approve the policy as amended.
So there's.
All right.
Just it's been moved and seconded that we approve of the amendments
proposed to judicial Council policy.
605 Any discussion?
The motion for discussion on the motion.
Yeah. Is there.
All right.
All those in favor signify by saying I don't want to pay.
All right, Post
it passes.
Thank you.
Bye. Jen.
Well done.
Yeah.
I don't know what that all that background was.
Okay.
All right, so now we're on item number five.
This is a discussion item, judicial branch use of artificial intelligence.
And Jason Betts is here to give us an overview
on artificial intelligence and recommendations
on use of AI on branch devices.
Welcome, Jason.
This might be your first opportunity to present at the Council.
This is my first effort.
It will all be promised to be really nice to you.
I have no concerns on that. Yes
Thank you for inviting me back.
As you probably remember in the April Council meeting, we previewed
that we would be coming back to this group, giving an overview
of artificial intelligence, doing some amount of level setting about
what's going on at the branch and then providing some recommendations
for how artificial intelligence should be used at the Minnesota judicial branch.
So I want to start a
bit by just laying some common foundation for everyone.
The term A.I.
Artificial intelligence is a very generic term, and you can see
from the graphic it represents quite a host of different disciplines
within the world of data science and information technology.
The conversation we're going to be having today is really going to be focusing
around the area of artificial intelligence
called neural networks and more
the technology
that's used by tools like chat t,
Google, bada bing, which is a subset of that called
large language models.
The other areas of artificial
intelligence are not meant to be represented in this presentation,
but you can see that artificial intelligence in all its forms
is used by pretty much everybody in their daily life on a daily basis.
Let's talk a
little bit about how some of this technology works.
It's important to understand the process, at least from a high level perspective,
when we start to look at some of the risks that are presented because of
artificial intelligence,
how the entire model works, it starts training data.
So at the top of the circular diagram,
a subset of information is used
to essentially process
and then teach the model how to respond when new information comes in.
That's not part of the training data set.
So that data is fed into the process.
It's it's processed and published and made available to an end user.
When an end user seeks to query something from the model,
the goal of large language models is that the result
is something that's called synthetically produced, so it's fake.
If you asked if you ask, for example,
how should I go about making a cake?
It's to present the steps to make a cake, but it's going to be steps
that it has created based on what it knows and what it's learned.
It's not going to paraphrase.
I saw this article and here are the steps that that article said.
It's going to be important distinction to understand that point.
When we look at some of the risks,
ultimately, then the data that you feed into that model
and the feedback you give based on the results are used to retrain.
And so it becomes a circular process where the model is constantly evolving
over time based on other information that is sent into it
and based on the feedback the user gives to the model itself.
There's two key points in this entire process
that are going to affect both efficacy and risk one is what's the source
or the genesis of the data that it was originally trained on?
How reliable was that data?
How diverse was that data like that?
And then the second one is how are the results monitored?
So how are people influencing to say this was a great
answer to how I make a cake or this was a horrible answer.
This told me nothing about making cake.
This told me how to change a tire.
Those are the two
key inflection points in this entire process.
And because the technology is evolving so much,
you'll find that it's not 100%
replicable as far as the process
goes on a continual basis.
As I mentioned earlier,
you know, artificial intelligence is in use everywhere across the branch.
It's in use in our daily.
Even some of the tools that we asked people to pause
in April were used at the branch prior to to that request.
Some the areas that it has been used or that people have asked for accepted
use of you can see are really divided into the two columns of what are we call
the generally accepted use and then the generally discouraged use.
We'll talk about why some of the items are showing in
the generally discouraged use column and it'll be based on the risks
that are inherent in the use of the technology themselves.
This is not a complete list by any stretch of the imagination.
These are the more common examples or more common
scenarios that were brought forth on how people either have been
or have requested to use this technology in that slide use.
And that's the use.
What you have is that information.
Yes. Chief Justice.
So as a as a footnote, some of the slides were reformatted.
I wanted to make sure everybody knew that that was new information out there.
And and information is contained in the packets that was sent out.
But it is reformatted for hopefully better readability.
And the the version you're seeing presented
here will be included in the minutes of this meeting.
Thank you for that call out.
Chief Justice.
Now I want to turn a little bit to some of the risks.
And the risks are are really derived
based on how the how the entire process works,
but then also how the evolution of the technology is occurring.
It's no doubt that on a daily
and and many times a day basis, you're probably seeing stories and articles
in the media about the impact of AI in these types of tools, and that's
highly prevalent in some of the risks that that are identified.
The first risk I want to
highlight is really around privacy
as as any
tool or technology on the Internet.
Data that you enter into that tool is no longer under your control.
So if you enter information of a sensitive nature,
there's no guarantee ever on what happens to that data.
Who sees that data
and that type of risk.
There's also no guarantee that the information
that the system maintains, whether you entered the data or not,
isn't going to at some point be made available elsewhere.
The two bullet points on this slide really highlight two different aspects of that.
One is a screenshot taken from the sign up
process for a chat itself.
They are very straightforward and mentioning that the information
in these systems is subject to being disclosed outside of the system.
Users keep that in mind as they enter data and use the system.
The second is very recently and that on the 20th of March, Chad
had itself a data breach in which
customer information people who use the system
was potentially exposed to third party hackers.
Privacy is probably one of the
the two greatest risks to the branch,
depending on the type of information that people would enter into the system.
And then what the system may do with that information.
Once you've it,
the second risk and one that is
definitely more prevalent and more difficult for people to sometimes
apart from others, is the accuracy risk.
Again, the two bullet points
highlight specifically what this risk entails.
A screenshot from the signup process.
Again from Chad.
GP calls out that the information presented
by Chad GPT may not be factual.
I can tell you as a
as a very infrequent but interested user of the technology,
the amount of false information probably equals
the amount of factual information that's presented back from the tool.
There's a
term that's been coined because of this that I find rather humorous,
where they say the technology is hallucinate
and this this is a huge problem.
There's a reference to a New York Times article that's been quoted here
that says this
factually incorrect or hallucination
is one of the biggest problems facing the technology itself today.
Why? This is a challenge versus
what many people would say to me is how is this different from Google?
I could Google a term, I could get incorrect information
as equally as easy as I can, Google
GPT and get incorrect information.
The difference is Chad, GPT
and the other large language model tools don't expose their sources,
so you don't know what information is generated.
Its response based on.
You don't know that
it looked at Bill's blog on,
you know, the judicial branch versus the Minnesota Judicial Branch website.
You don't you don't know that fact.
So you are left to determine as the consumer of that information,
how accurate is that information that's really being presented to me?
And unlike Google or unlike a specific search engine term, you don't know
that the source of that information was something that you may trust
or you may not trust inherently by itself.
And the accuracy is is one of the biggest problems
that that I see people run into because they they treat
the information as fact and they don't do the due diligence
to substantiate or vet the information that's being sent back to them.
One that is
one risk that is part of all
artificial intelligence technologies, not just large language
is a risk of bias.
And there was a tremendous
documentary that was created
based out of some work by some individuals in the MIT Media Lab
that highlighted how artificial intelligence systems
in their nature are bias.
The impact of that bias is really determined by a number of factors.
It's determined once again based on the training data that was used.
It's determined based on the feedback it gets, not in the responses,
but all systems
because of this have some level of inherent bias.
And the risk to that bias is, again, misinformation.
It can perpetuate false
positions, false viewpoints.
One article
that I've seen described the potential for A.I.
when it comes to bias is being a megaphone larger than Twitter.
So if you think of the impact Twitter has had in misinformation,
according to these individuals, this is this represents
a much bigger risk from a misinformation perspective.
And the less
concern or risk that I highlighted
as it pertains to these technologies is around a legal risk.
And and this is a very evolving topic
because the case law and the legislation around the use of these technologies
is far lagging the actual technology development itself.
There are more and more cases being entered on a daily basis,
on a weekly basis across the world and on people who are who are
taking action against these
either these companies or the information that's being presented from companies.
Some of the very cool from a technology perspective, things
that these technologies are able to do, like generate
new content
is is being challenged as being copyright
because it's based on copyrighted material.
And and the age old.
How much of this is versus how much is derived from
the original source is is one challenge
that's that's going through the courts right now.
So because of
the legal concerns and the lagging legislation
and case law data, it there's it's unknown right now
kind of what direction a lot of these concerns are going.
So I say all these things
and it makes it sound really bad,
like this technology is evil
and and I will tell you, depending on what articles
you read, people do say that that this technology is very bad.
I personally don't have that same.
I think the important
takeaway on any on this technology
or any other topic is that it's approached with a critical mind.
It has the potential to be very bad.
It also has the potential to be very good, and it's up to the responsibility
of the user to then determine how they want to use that technology.
Because of that and because the potential
for very outcomes and results.
I'm putting forth some recommendations to the Council to consider
that would include the
use of chat and other large language models.
That's what the Astra is
based on, a pre authorized exception process.
So for the use cases that were prior in the deck that said, here
are some good examples of how chat GPT and other AI large language
models are currently being used at the branch that are positive.
We would like to continue to allow people to still use for those types of use cases
at the same time, by pre them we can hopefully guide people
who may be using it in ways that we would maybe want to limit use.
We are also proposing that we will continue to monitor
that use over time so we can report back in a biannual basis
the metrics around the adoption of these technologies
both within the branch and then of course in the broader technology landscape.
Biannual Well,
may seem like it's a pretty frequent basis,
but the evolution of this technology has been so rapid
that I can't tell you in six months we will even be talking
about the same challenges and risks that we'll probably be talking about.
Those plus a whole host of others.
So part of that will be the IT department for the branch
will be monitoring the evolution in case we do need to come back
and make a recommendation that varies from whatever direction
that the Judicial Council decides
to that part.
We are also going to be developing a breast best practices document
that we will make available to all staff so that so
should they choose to use this technology or request to use this technology,
they'll understand both the risks of doing that
as well as what we would consider to be acceptable use
to hopefully then also educate and inform
staff amongst around the appropriate use of Chad GPT,
both at the branch but also in their personal life
and we will review
this topic in conjunction with the H.R.
Policy 317 that talks about internet and electronic communications.
This will bring proposed changes of necessary back
to the Judicial Council in July for review.
And and again, we will monitor that
both the technology and the usage to make those determinations.
So that's the extent in the some of what I wanted to present.
I did include an additional slide because I find it very interesting.
I'm not going to assume I'm going to assume nobody can read that.
So I'm just going to paraphrase.
I did ask Chad GP whether we the courts should use that.
And if you look at the results of what Chad
responded, I'm not surprisingly the technology is good.
It outlined the risks.
It said there's there's a lot of risk in using this.
Obviously, legal matters are very sensitive
and complex and the user should keep that in mind
as they are working through these types of questions.
So with that, Chief, I will turn it back to you for next steps.
Shelley.
So, Jason, you you talked on the two slides back
about having best practices given level of risk.
Can you talk about why you're recommending using best practices, which in my mind
the user can decide whether or not they want to use them versus a policy,
which means that you need to adhere to the provisions of the document.
Okay.
Yeah.
You know, that's a really, really important distinction.
And I think there's a couple ways that we approach and look that
I'm going to actually back up to the slide that talked about the acceptable
or the generally acceptable use of types of technical.
It's sorry that better
if we look at the column
of generally accepted use
that does represent fair amount of
positive areas
that that people across the branch can use this technology.
And even if we
allow for some of these positive use cases.
It's not easily possible for us to to let's say
narrow people's use to only that exact use case.
So having a best practice document
that people can augment
to their use of the technology
will help remind them on what the risks
and how people should be using these types of tools would be.
I really see them as working together to help enforce best practice.
So sort of the way I see this going is
in July.
So in July, we're going to talk this and make some decisions.
In the meantime, nobody should be using this stuff.
Everybody should continue to follow what Jason said
before, which is don't use this stuff.
There will be, as part of the decision making process,
the the the idea that you can use stuff
if you get approval via the approval form.
And if you get approval to use the stuff, then you got to use these best practices
as part of your approved use of sorry for my non-technical
use of the term stuff
and there may need to be amendments to judicial council
policy 317 to deal specifically with A.I..
So we're going to bring this back again in July.
But in the meantime, unless you say otherwise, Jason, I mean,
it just seems to me that nobody should be using this stuff unless
unless you disagree with that.
If I may, Steve. Yes, please.
The recommendations
we we we will be willing to make
and we would be willing to implement them ahead of the July timeframe,
with the exception, of course, of the policy change.
And we don't know that there is a definite policy change that is needed.
So that needs to be reviewed before we would say
yes or no that there is a policy change that's needed.
The pieces need to be in place before we would
rescind our direction of pausing
would be to have the pre-authorization
form and approved
and the best practices,
documentation and guideline then made available.
I would anticipate that that would happen within the next 30 days,
if that's the direction of the council.
So that does that make sense to everybody so that as soon as we can get
this authorization process in place, then people can start asking for permission.
Yeah, just give me one minute.
People can start asking for permission to use the stuff,
Correct.
And that makes sense to you, Jeff.
Well, how are they going to know that there's a form out there?
It seems to me we need to have a policy that says, Yeah,
if you want to do this, you need to use the form.
So I don't think we can just throw an email out there with a form,
and especially if it's going to be authorization that judges,
then I think we need a council change to the policy to indicate the form.
So, so let's, let's make it all come back in July.
And in the meantime, nobody uses it, right?
I mean, I understand that's a little bit more clunky maybe,
but that does seem like maybe that's a little bit easier in the implementation.
So tell your people don't use it.
And we're going to have a policy discussion in July
and then there'll be a pre-authorization form and we'll go from there.
Just the standard.
So I don't, I think that's all fine too.
Quick comments.
I have a relative in the computer programing business and he tells me
this particular tool is heavily in use in computer programing circles for finding
particular sort of manual codes that are otherwise difficult to find.
And the second thing I learned
attending a bench meeting on Friday listening to a report
from a district court judge is that this this thing is already in use
and it's generating bench memoranda with completely fictitious citations
submitted
by lawyers in connection with pending matters.
So I, I don't have anything to say about this other than, I guess,
you know, be wary of what you read, I guess
so the plan is don't use any of it.
And in July we're going to have a policy and the forms
and we'll make some decisions about use going forward.
Is that clear to everybody?
Sorry to be a little Judge Castro.
So what Justice Andersen
just said really scares me.
I'm wondering if there's something that
the Board of Professional Responsibility
might be sending out to lawyers.
Judge Hennessey at the I think it was Judge Morley in our
district had this happen.
And she did reach out to the board and has been talking to them
about how to respond. And they're on top of it.
They're aware that this has been something that's coming up lately.
So I don't know if be helpful to have more of a conversation with them
about how we are to respond from the bench perspective.
But if the law clerk hadn't looked up the particular cases, it looked like
a completely legitimate motion,
but everything in it was 100% fictitious.
The lawyer had the lawyer did come forward and say, I am sorry I generated this.
I did not realize it was false.
So but that's happening.
And I've had a couple of lawyers sent in my courtroom saying I use this
for closing arguments.
This is how I generate my closing argument case to John.
So my son is kind of playing around with this.
And there's this professor who is so worried
about his students plagiarizing, and he says he can ask chat.
Was this generated by a chat?
And it will tell them so he can find out.
He can fact check it.
So apparently it can itself to see if it generated
something.
Hang on.
But let's go Jeff Chase and the judge for that.
Well, I was just asking, Jason, I mean, we probably want to get some guidance
here, The counsel.
But cybersecurity could block
access to these tools until we have a decision in July.
So I'm sure nobody's tempted
lock it. Yes.
No, just practitioner.
Let's appoint a subcommittee.
Yeah, let's appoint a subcommittee, Jason, and then I'll go to Judge Brennan.
I wanted to just quickly add a follow up to John's comment.
The tools that are used
to validate the information to see if it was generated by an eye,
large language model are still lagging the generation.
So they are working.
They those companies understand that risk associated with
just generating a bunch of data and not being able to determine
what the authenticity of it was.
But it's not 100% there yet.
It's much better now.
I'll just going to follow up to John's
comment that that technology is not 1%.
There are some articles out there.
They did this at a university where
they identified
the essays by some of the college students
that were original as being produced by.
So I mean, the technology is still new.
And I agree, Chief, we just I personally think we shouldn't use it at all,
but I'm interested in hearing
what we talk about next month things.
Okay, so cyber is going to block all this stuff
and we're going to hear more in July and make some decisions then.
But in the meantime, nobody should be using it.
Anything else?
Any other questions?
Comments for Jason Judge Peter,
can you give me examples
of what would be an appropriate use within our legal system or chat?
Go ahead, Jason.
So a lot of
the examples are not necessarily specific to the legal profession
in more specific to administrative functions.
You know, looking at the acceptable use of things
that have been proposed, you'll see they're
they're not necessarily specific to the law, but they are specific
to creating presentations, creating different questionnaires and formats
as justice Anderson mentioned, it's heavily used in some of the software
development and technology realms.
So from that perspective, I don't have a good answer for
what would be a a legal or a law specific use case,
but some of the the work that goes around it, it's
tough to think of something that would be a acceptable use in the legal field.
It just yeah,
okay.
Well, we'll hear more in July.
And in the meantime, keep it turned off.
Thank you, Jason.
All right, number six,
Katie's here to review the draft at four 2425.
Strategic plan and operational plan.
Katie, thank you.
You have already the draft strategic plan
in today's earlier presentation.
I'm happy to bring it up so you can take a look at it.
Just a reminder, it is our three strategic goals
and we have eight specific priorities.
Under each of those three goals.
So this was presented last summer.
It's here for discussion again.
And then the other part of this agenda item is our first year,
fiscal year 24 operational plan,
which is also here for discussion today
to just go through both. Yes.
All right.
So in our operational plan,
this is a draft this month.
I will note that, you know, especially the legislative session wraps
up, we kind of look and make sure that we have the right things on this plan.
So this is a draft.
It would come back for decision next month.
We do have tasks under each of the strategic priorities.
Some strategic priorities have more than others.
It's not uncommon
and I'm not going to
go through all of the A there's about there is, I think, about 38
different tasks and initiatives that are on here.
So my plan is not to go through these.
Again, this is for discussion.
If you do have questions about any of these,
certainly now or in between now, in the next council meeting,
I'd be happy to answer any questions you have.
Yeah, and this is this was approved to come here by Jack.
So Jad creates the operational plan each year.
So this this was approved by to recommend
to judicial counsel.
Can I ask you, Katie, about on page three
of the
operational plan,
maybe it's page four.
What I want to ask about complete a digital accessibility self audit
and complete remediation as needed.
Could you just say, can somebody say what that is?
Yeah, don't know.
Jason, If you want to talk about the digital accessibility self audit,
I actually think this is one.
We're going to have some clarifying language for you next
about what this is.
So the accessibility audit
goal stems from the State Court
administrator order in 2022
that says we need to meet certain accessibility guidelines
as we've developed new applications or as we've modified
our existing application portfolio, we've made sure that we were consistent
with that that State Court Administrator Order.
But there were a lot of legacy applications which haven't changed
in that time.
So we want to go through, review them to make sure they do
support the accessibility guidelines and if for some reason they don't,
then we're going to modify them to make sure they do.
So this has to do with Minnesotans being able
to access our stuff electronically.
Correct, like through screen readers and and other
other tools and our employees as well.
Yeah. Okay.
All right.
That's helpful. Thank you.
Any other questions about the draft plan or the operation
plan, which would both be before us for decision next month?
And the
language does reflect the diversity, equity and inclusion.
The draft does have that language in there, right? Yes.
But we probably would need to bring back is the actual core branch goals,
which are not technically part of this document.
But yes.
All right.
Any other questions or comments about these two documents?
All right.
This will be here for action next month.
Thank you.
Number seven,
Judge Beutel is going to us, the FBI 23 annual report from TCI
and the TCI is proposed y 24 workplan that afternoon.
Everyone, I am here with Cecelia Bliss,
we first have our work plan from that point 23
reporting out the out of the various things that we did
from reviewing the application's funding requests,
working working with multi county courts,
exploring barriers,
kind of post-COVID on how things are going,
continuing training programing,
having had quite a bit of virtual training.
But now we will be have our first in-person training in June.
So this is our report.
I'll certainly take questions if anybody has
any questions on the annual report.
Any questions?
Hey, what about FOIA 24?
All right,
maybe I'll just tee this up and then it over to Cecelia Bliss.
But you know, this it is kind of a ties into our roadmap ten year strategic plan
to promote access to treatment courts across state of Minnesota.
And then with our strategic plan, there are a couple of things targeted
towards drug court to prioritize equitable
access to treatment courts in every county in Minnesota.
And then the operational plan to develop a strategic plan
for treatment courts and implement statewide performance measures.
So kind of our 24 work
plan is targeted to those areas from the work the group here. So
as well as
Good afternoon, George.
I think you just about covered it.
So we really simplified the work plan for this year.
You'll probably notice
there's a significant change from the annual report for FY 23
relative to our workplan for this upcoming fiscal year.
But really, you know, I think when we've talked about this, we've talked about the
I and TCI, which stands for initiative, the committee has been around since 2007.
So really the point where the committee needs to reassess and figure out
where it fits.
So one of the core projects for this upcoming year will for
the committee will be for the committee to figure that out.
So to review the documentation and all of the documentation
for other committees and all of the existing policies around TCI.
And finally, to draft a charter that, you know, explicitly outlines TCI role in
treatment, court oversight, the membership composition in terms and overall goals.
We haven't done this formally really ever.
There's been some
memoranda around membership
and terms, but and some plans about specific areas,
but never this sort of large, you know,
overarching charter.
The committee will also support the development
of a statewide strategic plan for treatment courts, as Katie was.
This was this is part of what Katie
presented on, although I don't think she went into these details on her treatment.
Courts are on the ten year roadmap and the upcoming strategic and operational plans
on that operational plan is for the program to address this strategic plan.
QUESTION
You know, we don't we don't know where we're going yet,
So we have to figure that out and decide we'll be a part of that process.
And then finally, many of you are already aware,
but we're currently undertaking a project to develop statewide performance measures
for treatment courts
coordinators.
Are they just got their big survey today, A survey?
Well, it's about two judges. This has been presented at Chad.
Hopefully everybody's aware at this point, but TCI will also be involved
in feedback and will recommend those final measures to judicial council
this fiscal year.
And that's it.
Actions
judge line and this all
to make sure it's drug treatment.
Courts, vets, courts.
All of this is under the same umbrella, correct?
Yes. So and we're talking about treatment courts.
For our purposes, we mean drug DWI, drug and GW, a hybrid courts, family dependency
treatment courts, veterans courts, mental health courts and juvenile drug courts.
This doesn't include things like domestic violence courts or other dockets
that have not been approved by judicial council as treatment courts.
Okay. Thank you.
Any other questions?
Anything else?
Judge Patel?
So this will be here for what decision next month? Yes.
Thank you.
Then.
Are you good or do you need five or 10 minutes?
You're good. Everybody's good.
Okay. All right.
Number eight, Dan is going to present
the FBI 23 biennial budget third quarter report.
I thought, I was going to use my.
You need five. Okay.
You only have
you know, I can look,
I could give you a shortened version
three
and let me share my screen.
Okay.
Oh, here.
Part of the 97% which Riker
picks up.
Thank you for telling me.
We should have recorded that.
I don't hear that too often, you know?
All right, I'm going to go over the third quarter financial update
for fiscal year 23.
Obviously,
and I'll start on page three if you are following along.
So right now, this is the all court's fiscal year 23 general
fund budget summary, and I'll blow it up a little bit for you.
There we go. That's a little bit better.
Does it matter?
I'm going to look on my screen.
Thanks. Yeah. Stronger glasses anyways.
Okay.
So you can see on the left hand side, obviously are the courts.
The original budget is $404 million roughly,
and the current budget is about 429 million.
The difference obviously was carried forward from fiscal year 2 to 23.
We've had year to date expenses through the third quarter of about $292
million and total projected
expenses of about 426 million.
You can see a uncommitted balance of $2.8 million, two years ago.
I always like to compare two years ago because it's the same cycle,
but we were at about $4.1 million.
Remember this fiscal year we decided to do lump sum payments
and that equated to about $13 million.
So we're actually doing pretty well. So
the next page is the Supreme Court, and I'll go over
most of these really briefly, because you've had time to look at it.
But right now you can see the original budget for the Supreme Court
is $46.3 million
with the year to date expenses of about 30.3 million
total projected expenses of about 45.4 million.
That leaves uncommitted balance of about $920,000.
Two years ago, that was 345,000
for the Court of Appeals.
They have a current budget of 14 2 million
with year to date expenses of about 9.6
million total expected expenditures for the year of 14
1 million leaves uncommitted balance
of roughly $103,000.
Two years ago, it was about $133,000.
Now we have the trial court's scroll down here in just a touch.
And this is very small print because there's a lot of budgets here.
Remember, the trial court makes up about 82% of our budget.
So there's a lot of budgets.
But you can see the current budget is about $350
with the year to date expenses of about 235 million
total projected expenses for the year of 348 million.
And you have an uncommitted balance
of $1.8 million.
Two years ago, it was about $3.6 million.
Again, we did the lump sum payments.
Obviously that's had some impacts on
where we're at today.
So that's it for the trial court's
issue with the trial court.
You can see from the last page, big deficit in the mandated services area.
And you can look per district on the top half of the page
and where we have issues.
But if you look below where we're having
issues is interpreter, psych and jury of the interpreter
and jury that is just picking up speed from the pandemic
and some of the just, you know, more cases and more juries that we've had
with the psych services.
A little bit different situation that has stayed
pretty steady and growing even throughout the pandemic.
So issues in the psych services
area so you can see,
we had an original budget of 16.76,
$5 million for this fiscal year.
That budget is up to 20.5 million roughly.
We've had year to date expenditures of about 15.5 year to date,
and we have total projected expenses of $2 million this fiscal year.
So a huge difference
right now.
You know, what's been happening
is that districts have been plowing money from their district
budgets into the mandated services budget.
And you can see right now we have an uncommitted balance of about $1.5 million.
So that is an issue that we'll have to contend with
for the treatment courts.
You can see the original budget
was $5.068 million.
They had a little bit of carry forward.
So their current budget is, $5.385
million year to date expenses of about 3.2 million
and total projected
expenses of $5.25 million leaves
uncommitted balance of roughly $135,000.
Two years ago, that was 183,000.
So pretty much in line with what we've seen in the past.
Senior judges,
if you look towards the middle of the page, you'll see the current budget.
Current budget is $522,000 roughly.
We've had year to date expenses of $321,000
and some more projected expenses of $209,000.
Slight negative in this budget.
It will be cleaned up, but about a little over $8,000.
So on,
You know, two years ago
we had a current budget at this time of about $1.2 million.
So this budget's less obviously.
I think part of that is because we have our money
and a lot of senior judges are pointed at that funding.
Speaking of
are on a transition that was also
done it better myself.
I didn't do it myself. Okay.
Ah, this is a two year budget.
This came to us from the legislature,
started at $9.961 million.
That's what we have now.
And you can see the changes from each of the districts.
You look at the original budget versus, the current budget,
some districts have given up money saying we really don't need it.
Some have said, can you give me more?
So it's a little bit of each, but you can see
have spent today about $8.3 million.
And we have total projected expenses of about 9.971.
So that leaves a uncommitted balance right now of a little over
$50,000, which we will use up.
And we have the four D account.
You have a current
budget of $14.1 million with your due
date expenses of 5.1 million,
you have total projected expenses of 12.6
million and a uncommitted balance of about 1.5 million.
Two years ago we were at 2.62 million
for uncommitted balance
and we go to unfunded needs.
And this is always interesting, but right now we've had contribute
from central accounts, districts, Court of Appeals, Supreme Court
or in the tuna, $14.2 million.
We've had approved projects, up $13.9 million.
So right now there's an available balance of $300,000.
And you can see projects down below.
But as far as the balances, two years ago,
we had contributions of $20.3 million.
So roughly a $6 million difference.
I remember what I said.
I said we had lump sum payments of $13 million
and there's a difference of $6 million here. So
financially we're doing probably better than we were a couple of years ago.
So that's good to see.
So that's unfunded needs.
And then you just have recapping as far as our budget,
what's happened for the general fund up above for the trial courts,
we have about $3.3 million in uncommitted funds at this
time, 103,000 and the Court
of Appeals and for the Supreme Court
with general fund and 40 funds, you're looking at $1.9 million.
So total for the branch.
Whoops, went right past it.
Total for the branch we have uncommitted between general
fund and $45.4 million
and two years goes about 7.3.
As far as receipts coming into the branch, you can see
we are up from this time last year, we're up about 5.68%.
We are about
$15 million ahead of two years ago.
So just to let you know that
and you can see revenue has picked up the speed here, too,
they're up about $2.5 million
and they're up
about $6.7 million from two years ago.
So collections are starting to happen more and more.
So that is it as far as fiscal year 23 achieve.
And there are some mandated services information at the end
in the appendix that you can read at your convenience.
As far as 23, I don't know if there's any questions,
if you have any questions about the Slide 23/3
quarter financial report,
the questions.
Okay.
Dan, has the next item too.
Are people still good? Keep on going.
Okay. So this is a
really a
discussion item to go over
the proposed FY 2425 biennial budget distribution.
So Dan is going to just us through in these things, assuming
they'll get signed and we get the money, will make these decisions in November
excuse me, November, June.
So no decisions today, just
an outline of kind of the things
that we will have before us. So.
And you want to. Sure.
Well, first, I just want to say thank you to the chief
and Jeff, because at the legislature, the waning moments.
Appreciate it.
But wasn't for your efforts, this presentation would be pretty bleak.
So I really appreciate what you did.
So very grateful.
I'll be gone.
Like the chief said, I'll be going over the 24 and 25 biennial budget proposal.
This is version one.
As the chief said,
this for the District Courts Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court.
And the reason I say
version one, like the chief said, too, is there are still other items
at the legislature that could possibly impact our budget.
And there are a few items that I'll walk
I'll talk about later that may need some additional.
So that's this is version one,
but it gives you a lot of information of what's to come.
The first few slides are those, you know, those of you
that haven't been here a while, more of an educational piece
for some of you that have been here a while, it's more of a refresher.
So I'll go through these slides fairly quick.
So I'll start on slide three.
Just a second here.
Okay.
So I just wanted to briefly talk about when the money
comes over from the legislature on this stuff, just to hear
a basically comes in what I call it, three buckets.
The Supreme Court, which we commonly referred to it
in the accounting areas, G 65, the Court of Appeals.
J 58 and the District Court's J 33.
You'll see district courts and trial court same thing.
Then we take the money from the Supreme Court,
we break it down and you can see we break it down into the Supreme Court
scale network budgets, things like that.
The Court of Appeals, my favorite budget.
We hardly break down.
We just throw it in one budget, love it, love the Court of Appeals.
So and then
the district
court's a little bit more complicated and it's 82% of our budget.
So it needs to be a little bit more complicated.
But you can see for the most part, what we do is we take the mandated
services portion first and the treatment courts
and then the other central budgets, and you'll see what I'm talking about
in the next slide, but such as the judge budget.
And then that leaves so much money to be allocated out to the districts
and CBC through the long term allocation formula.
So as I talked about,
again, district courts, more complicated gets broken down.
Again, we take the money off the top for the mandated and treatment courts
and the central budgets, and then we're left with a pot
to distribute through the districts and the payments center
through the long term allocation.
So this just gives you, you know, if you want to print these art color
and put them up on your desk, they're really very I think right now
I think they are.
Okay. So
then we get to the long term allocation and I'll go over this fairly quick.
And usually I think, Chief, you see do this with buckets, haven't you.
Yeah. I should have brought the buckets down.
I it is, it's really good. Yes.
You'll be really excited when you see it.
I put on a show, it's like a magic act.
Okay.
So step one is really to calculate our current budget.
And again, we first take out the mandated and the treatment
court's money, and then you're left with this total DHS budget.
You then take up the central budgets, like I talked
about, the judge budget overhead, things like that
and it gets you to this next pot of money, the district and C.P.S.
budgets you.
Then what we do is we look at each district to see
if they have referee's judicial officers hearing officers and we take money
for the referees and we put them into the respective districts.
So we set it aside for those districts.
We then take off the top unique cost.
And what I mean by that is
you have reminder money that only only the sixth District has that.
So we pull out money out the top and put it over by the sixth District budget,
cradle to grave benefits, the second District, the ninth District
and the 10th have that.
So we we pull off the top and set that aside.
Bus pass subsidies with the second and fourth.
You can see how that goes on and on.
So why don't you take that money off the top?
Then you're left with this pot of money that's going to run through the formula.
And I call that the adjusted district and CPC D.A.s budgets.
So that's your current budget.
What you have to with to put it through the formula.
Then step two is to figure out what is the need of each district and CPC.
So the first thing you do is to calculate
the total estimated need is figure out what your judicial need is.
So for every judge a district have you receive one law clerk and a court
reporter, I should say money for a law clerk and a court reporter
and for a referee or judicial officer.
They receive one court reporter and one law clerk.
If it's a family court, we then need to figure
what is case related and support staff need.
And you can see that and the blue boxes here.
And this is the most significant part of our budget in the trial courts.
So the first is case related.
You take their implied need for case related staff any times
that by the district average salaries of all case related staff,
then we have to add on support staff and that's 17.5%
of the total staff need using district averages for salaries.
We then provide 10% for the operating need
and then that equals your total personnel and operating estimated need.
So the next step in this is
that oops, calculate the allocation process.
So you take the green box up on your upper
right and you divide by your yellow box
and you get the percent of estimated need.
Okay?
Then basically you add back
your referee money that you got or unique for each respective district.
You add that back
into the respective districts and you get your new budget for the year.
And that's how it works.
That's That's another one.
That's a really nice looking chart.
Brett Richter does that and he does a really nice job. So
okay, so now
unless there's any questions about that
lesson, feel like a teacher that was really sort of fun.
Next is like the chief said these are issues will walk through
next month but just to give you a flavor of how the budget
is recommended to be allocated, I'm going to walk through these decisions
items and again, not decisions today.
Obviously, we hear them today and then we'll come back next month
and listen to them.
The first thing is around the biennial base
budget adjustments and reallocation.
This is the trial courts.
So Jad recommends the following adjustments to the trial court budgets.
A one central budgets
provide wage and insurance increases,
so it's to allocate 1.5 to 8000024
and 2.73 5,000,025 for the trial court.
Central budgets
for wage and insurance increases.
This includes employees from treatment courts, mandated services,
judicial advisory and DGA Executive Secretary
and Judicial District Administrators.
That's a1a2 judge budget
wage and insurance increases so provide
5.9 4,000,024 and 9.5
5,000,025 for wage
and insurance increases for judges.
A three is district
and CPC wage and insurance increases and that's allocate
17.1 5,000,024 31.005
and 25 for district and CPC employee wage and insurance increases.
Again using that long term allocation formula that we just went over
a four
district court law clerk Salary increases
allocate 2.03 3,000,024
and 2.03 3,000,025 for district Court
law clerk salary increases A5 mandated psychological services
allocate $1.5 million 24 and $1.5 million and 25.
And that is one time money.
Essex mandated services
competency restoration Additional required psychological exams
allocate 1.5 million and
24 and 5.042 and 25 for the costs
associated Additional required competency examination cost.
This is permanent money 5.042.
The Legislature did reduce it
because they thought it wouldn't get started until probably April,
so they did reduce it from the 5.04 to for the first year.
I can thank you, Shelly.
I was just testing you.
You passed.
Okay,
See, then you scroll too much. There we go.
Thanks, Shelly.
A7 contract our interpreter.
Payment rate.
If you recall, this was one time money for 22 and 23.
The legislature now made this permanent.
So this is to allocate the $200,000 in 24 and 25
for these contract or pay increases
eight to
new treatment courts is to allocate
$422,000 in 24 and 25 for the four new treatment courts.
A nine This is extreme risk
protection orders on this for implementation of that,
and this is to allocate $91,000.20
482,025 for this
A10 courtroom technology.
This is one time money allocate $7.4 million in fiscal year 24
for courtroom technology, 811
court case backlog, again, one time money.
And this is to allocate $4.2 million in 24 for this effort
K trial court budget adjustments.
And we'll walk through some of this in a little bit here.
But as to move 50% of the way towards equalization of 24
and 100% and fiscal year 25,
this basically helps the transition from one biennium to the next.
So you don't get such a large hit either way
be to transfer 550,000 from DHS to mandated services
to fund the three year rolling average increasing operating costs.
So this is a three year rolling average. This is normal.
What we do
see is the Court of appeals
allocate hundred and $85,000
in 24 and 1.68 5,000,025
for judge and employee wage and insurance increases
D for the Court of Appeals.
The Court of Appeals recommends the following per policy reimburse
any court appeals judge who is permanent place of residence is more than 50 miles
from the judge's permanent chambers on Saint Paul
for housing expenses or mileage for travel from.
The judge's permanent chambers.
This needs approval.
This was agreed to by council last time, last biennium,
but this needs approval for fiscal year 20 and 25.
So it's just here to say, yep, we can do this or not.
We just ask that there is money in the Court of Appeals budget to absorb
that expense.
That's a question.
I understood it as a question. Yes.
All right, then.
Go ahead and just scroll in here.
That's the score. I need a helper.
Supreme Court. E
This is the wage and insurance increases.
This allocates 3.19 7,000,024 5.68 and 25
for judge and employee wage and insurance increases
mandated services
Jad recommends following allocate $110,000 in 24
and $110,000 in 25 for the statewide missed supervisor.
And I don't have that spelled out.
I need to say, Oh yeah, Quarter chief.
That's an acronym.
We'll straighten that out.
B The districts will need to self on any mandated services deficit
from their DIS budgets that was there two years ago as well.
And then, as I said before, transfer $550,000
from DHS demand to cover three year rolling average increase in cost
Judge budget.
The judge budget has a starting projected deficit of $41,000
per year after Jad recommendations below
this deficit can be managed within the overall trial court's appropriation.
Jad recommends that we use an assumption of to judge vacancy rate per
pay period, meaning we basically will have two vacancies per pay period
budget, disability expenses or the possibility
of disability expenses for 1.75 judges.
Senior judge administrative pool will be funded at $100,000 per year.
That's $10,000 per district and then senior judge vacancy
reimbursement be funded at 75% of the per diem rate.
And then the last
sorry, Shelly, I need to make this smaller
so I can fit it all on one page,
then judicial equalization be funded
at $166,000 of additional resources per year,
which raises all districts to a minimum of the statewide average
of 106.1% of the judicial
weight of caseload needs.
Last page
of decision items that we'll talk about next month.
Allocation of the four D child reimbursement funds.
We're expecting to get about $6.054
million in 24,
and we projected five to be roughly the same.
JAD recommends that the four D child support funding would be allocated
as follows Districts would receive 1.867 million
for the 424 and 25 e court
would receive 3.554 million each year.
The CAP program would receive 1.19 in fiscal
year 24 and 1.26 3,000,025
and then additional Tyler maintenance of $659,000 per year.
So the total allocation for 24 7.27 million
for 25 and 7.34 million.
So With
this budget allocation, the budget would have a deficit of a little over
1.2 million and 24, almost 1.3 and 25, leaving
basically $2.5 million budget
deficit, a biennial budget deficit for this 40 funding.
And that will need to be carried forward from fiscal year 23.
So Chad recommends the 40 allocation
above allocate each district at 1.867 million,
allocate that proportionally based upon their actual 24 reimbursement.
Also, to fund the small county solution like we've done, I think the past
two biennium, they're able to carry forward money in there for 40 funds
to fund that portion and then 40 carry forward from 23.
24 obviously will be used for the deficit situation
and for the project staffing and operational need in 2014, 25,
Wolf,
as I told you, need a five minute break.
It is
so the let me just before I open it up for other questions,
let me just ask you about the four D so the deficit there that's that's
a new thing for us is how and the reason you want to know the reason.
Well filings are down exactly and what what it does
is the formula bases that off at two years ago.
So it's right in the midst of the pandemic.
So we're hoping we'll just gradually get out of it
and back up to the seven, 8 million we usually get.
So that's that's our hope.
So we're trying to wade through that the next two years.
And you think we can cover it, though? I do.
I yeah.
Are there other questions for Dan based on I know this is an awful
lot of information, but you like it's good to at least preview it today
understanding that we'll be
making about this stuff next month shortly and then Judge Anderson
And Dan, I have one question about the the judge budget and we show
we are projecting that we will have a 1.75
need for funding for disability.
We've had a lot of turnover on judges.
Conceptually, that means our bench is younger in age.
Do we do we have a sense for whether we've actually been
having less than 1.75?
Yeah, I recall two of them to be honest, one
and the fourth District one in the First District, I believe.
So it has been used less.
That would that would be a risk you would take if you decide
to lower that amount. Obviously
So that's just something you'd have to decide.
It's a good question.
Judge Jamieson.
My question is really simplistic and probably stupid
now that in my fifth year on the council I still kind of go cross-eyed
when you come up to the table.
So that's I mean, that's everybody tells me how simple
I put things
on the wage
insurance increases for staff and judge why is it less the front year
when all we've been hearing all along is nine and six or eight and four?
Yeah, that's a good question. Thanks. You're welcome.
What happens is you get your raise in your first year, right?
Let's say it's $100, right?
Well, you have to have $100 in the second year.
Right. To start with.
So that's why it's almost always seen as double.
I must answer your question.
You type, but it's simple enough.
There are questions for Dan,
Judge Seaver
may not be for Dan,
but just with law clerk pay
what what's what are the South is?
Are you going to come forward?
Oh, Asians or no?
Yes. So the council decided last fall to move law clerks on to a range.
And now there's the additional 2.033
million that the legislature has provided.
So that money will be used to help us set the bottom
of the range for law clerks and.
And how are you is going to talk about how to implement the range
and specifics and then they'll bring those recommendations back
next month to the council
other
questions.
Yes. Judge Lawson has a question here.
You can have my people take their cell
in the in the judge budget portion.
Have we always allocated the senior judge administrative pool equally amongst?
The districts? Yes,
it was 5000 at one time.
Then we increased it, I think about four years ago to 10,000.
There are questions.
What else you got, Dan?
Did you want me to walk through these numbers real quick or
are you worn out?
I'm not worn out. Okay.
Love numbers. Okay.
Why do I feel like these colors, the numbers,
I mean, you walk through it on your own, but I was going to walk through like,
the judge budget.
Well, and there is the issue of the education. Yes.
Do you want to talk about that? Just. Just so the council has a preview.
Let's so you can look at page ten at your own convenience.
But you can see what the governor started with, with the recommendation, the House
file Senate file conference committee in walked through that.
And then, you know, basically the individual are laid out for you on the next page.
You can walk through that.
And what the conference committee finally decided on how
the money is allocated for districts and CPC through the formula.
You can see what the numbers are there and I can walk through them and then how
those numbers and transfer down to the districts,
all of the central budgets, things like that.
On page 13, Then we get to the judge budget.
And I just wanted to talk about this a little bit because Shelly brings up
a great question.
Okay.
So here's what the judge budget is projected to be after we get wage
and insurance increases, but it starts at a $78.938 million.
We have projected judge salary cost a 77.42 million
projected operating cost of 1.35 million.
Now they're the operating cost in this budget have been lower, obviously
because of the pandemic, but now it's starting to creep back up to this level.
And this is what the budget has been for the last two, three, three years.
So it's getting tighter and tighter.
So what happens in this budget as we take out?
Well, first of all, you get vacancy savings of 260,000.
I'm just going to talk about 24.
Then you have this disabled judge need possibly of 203,000
that it will cost senior judge current pool 100000 to 10000 per district.
And then the current judicial equalization,
additional funding that we've put in each district of 166,000,
this leaves you a projected budget deficit of 41,000.
That's doable. It's not a big deal.
But from what I've heard
lately is judicial education with inflation cost.
You know, a lot of it is for
the conferences.
Let's say those costs have gone up significantly.
But the tune of $175,000 per year.
So how do we cover that?
So I guess that's the question there.
That's something that's undecided at this point.
Yeah.
So I mean, we could we could make pragmatic changes, say,
to the education program or we could see if there's some options to fund the plan.
That's what I wanted Dan to come back, maybe with some
internal funding we deficit budget and then
travel to one of the councils to know
that there is deficit in the area
and think about how we want.
So that's just a preview of that as well.
I just say to close, you know, this is a really great budget.
I'll I mean, there's
there's a lot of things, of course, you'd like to see better. Right?
But it is a great budget.
I do have some concerns about 26 and 27.
We are starting see inflation on the operating costs.
You know, that's the administrative types of things,
you know, supplies, things we spend money on besides compensation.
We're starting to see some increases there.
So we might start thinking about as we go into the next budget session,
how do we tackle that issue.
So but with that, it's a great budget.
I appreciate your your work on it.
Any other questions or comments for Dan?
All right.
We're going to have a test now on all the decision.
I'm kidding. We're not.
But, you know, Jack will be doing a lot of work on this.
And so,
judges, please talk to your district administrators
If you have questions or specific concerns.
It will be very helpful.
All right.
Anything else on the budget, Dan?
No, you're good. Okay.
So then go ahead.
You want to talk about kind of us under.
We're going to keep going.
We're going to keep going. Yeah.
I want to talk about cannabis,
other business.
So two more judicial districts have met their backlog.
I wanted to publicly recognize and thank the seventh and the eighth.
Way to go. Great job.
The June Judicial Council agenda.
Do we have that?
We have a lot of decisions items in June,
but I still think it's a one day meeting.
So that's coming around
in June.
The vice chairs term as vice chair ends.
And after a long and exhaustive battle, Judge Lawson has agreed to run again.
So we'll have a campaign and buttons and signs and everything, and
we'll be asked to vote on that next in June.
So, yeah, I think scones, things go.
All right. What else?
Legislative report.
So my legislative report is after.
That's my report.
The only other thing I want to say is there potentially
and I don't want to say this too loudly, because who knows what'll happen.
But in the marijuana bill, there is some additional money for treatment courts.
So we're waiting to see what's going to happen with that.
I know Judge Beutel, all of a sudden, like you,
you know, we'll see what happens there.
It's not something that
we were consulted about.
So, you know, that's always interesting.
But we're waiting to see what what, if anything, that turns into.
So stay tuned on that.
And And anything else, Jeff, that you
folks are just waiting to see what the governor is going to do.
Yeah.
All right.
Anything else from?
Anyone Judge Castro,
the chief, as far as I know.
So I've taken a glance at the conference committee
report.
I guess what's sitting in front of the governor right now,
there are two things,
policy items that I have little concern with.
And just to I'm sure there's many more, but
one is the the five you cap
on probation for felonies, for you cap on probation
for gross misdemeanors that is retroactive.
And and discussions that we should probably have
about that and that's going to impact, for instance,
folks who a judge may have given six
or seven years probation to and now
we're required, I guess, by the statute
to automatically discharge them from probation, notwithstanding
six months ago, they may have violated violated probation.
The other the other one is the
vacating convictions for aiding and abetting
and first and second degree felony murder that
for some reason someone thought it was a good idea
that all those preliminary requests come to me
statewide.
I'm not exactly sure if I have any jurisdiction to review those
Anyway, I need to I, I need to engage in conversations
about this because I'm not exactly sure how I'm supposed to respond
to that.
I thought you were the only one who can give me authority to review stuff
outside of my brave new world across the street. It's
so and I'm sure there are other issues that I'm sure Janet's
going to update us on soon, but I think we're going
to need to have some conversations about how to manage that.
Of course, Expungements are I expect those to be coming in now
really heavy with the added
third and fourth degree controlled substance
and the burglary and the few other things that they've included that are now
statutorily expunged.
So yeah, thanks for bringing all that up
online.
Yeah.
You know, just a quick question.
Any update about the effective date of June Juneteenth?
Oh, any update on that?
I know that initially
immediately, I don't.
The legislation to make it effective immediately is in the State
Department's conference committee report, but they have not finalized it yet.
So we'll know by Monday. I.