By KATE ELLIS
Guest Columnist
Gov. Greg Gianforte got it right in his first proposed state budget: We need more district court judges in Montana. Montana’s judicial system is under strain. Last year, over 61,000 cases were filed in the state’s district courts. A troubling number of those, over 12,000, were family law matters and child abuse and neglect cases. Those, along with another over 12,000 criminal matters, and over 5,000 probates and guardianships, make up over half of all case filings in our state district courts, often pushing ahead of things like business disputes and other civil matters on the courts’
busy dockets.
Performance statistics from the Office of the Court Administrator show our district judges are working hard, clearing cases at an impressive 94% on-time rate. But the latest district court workload
study, based upon time-needs benchmarks from the National Center for State Courts, shows the burgeoning number of cases filed, the sheer volume of filings, requires that the state add over 23 new judicial positions just to keep up.
When he arrived in Helena earlier this year, Gov. Gianforte requested that the Montana Legislature fund two new district court judges, a new judge for Gallatin County and one for Flathead County, two of the fastest growing areas of the state which actually need 3.28 and 2.59 additional judges to keep up with the workload. Gallatin County had unsuccessfully sought a new judge last legislative session when no new judicial positions were created by the legislature. Missoula County and Yellowstone County added new positions two legislative sessions ago.
Confusingly, rather than support this good proposal from the governor, the legislature has now stripped both new judicial positions from the budget and, instead, seems to be focusing on bills to make our existing district court judges (as well as the Montana Supreme Court and even justices of the peace) run in partisan elections.
We believe that partisan election of judges, something Montana rejected nearly a century ago, is an old and misguided idea that threatens the independence of our judiciary. In the case of our district courts, it threatens to further bog down an already overloaded system with the very partisanship that we see causing gridlock in other parts of our country and government.
In fact, only a handful of states still have partisan election of judges. In the largest of those states, Texas, a bipartisan commission recommended last December that the state abandon this bad practice.
We were encouraged by Lt. Gov. Kristen Juras’ testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this month on a bill to eliminate the state’s Judicial Nomination Commission that we opposed. She clarified that the bill in question was not attempting to make the election of judges partisan, and in fact, that Gov. Gianforte believes that judges should be nonpartisan in applying the law as written to the facts.
We could not agree more.
We urge the Legislature to return its focus to adequate funding of Montana’s judicial system and to adopt Gov. Gianforte’s proposal for two new district court judges for Gallatin and Flathead counties. To ensure our constitution’s promise that Montana’s courts are open to all we need more judges, not partisan ones.
Kate Ellis is the president of the State Bar of Montana.
Bozeman Daily Chronicle Guest Editorial 3/3/21