January 18, 2024
By Bill Raftery
In 2023 legislatures in Texas and Montana approved laws to require the posting of certain court performance data and metrics on court websites, while a similar Oklahoma bill is set to be discussed in 2024.
Montana’s HB 709 of 2023 as enacted requires posting of electronic data for each district court and each district court judge in the state by June 2025. Data must be reported quarterly on case processing measures including on-time case processing statistics, case clearance rates, and age-of-active cases statistics. Data must be reported annually for case filings by major case categories and new case filings, workload filings by judicial district, and the rates at which each district court judge's decisions are overturned wholly or in part on appeal.
Texas’s HB 2384 of 2023 as enacted requires the state’s Office of Court Administration (OCA) to annually report performance measures for each district court, statutory county court, statutory probate court, and county court. Those measures must include each court's clearance rate, the average time a case is before the court from filing to disposition, and the age of the court's active pending caseload. In addition, the law amends an existing statute requiring OCA to report on the efficiency of the courts in Texas by requiring the report to include disaggregated performance measures for each appellate court, district court, statutory county court, statutory probate court, and county court.
Oklahoma’s SB 883 of 2023 was not enacted but will be carried over and up for debate in 2024. The bill amends an existing statute that requires the Administrative Director of the Courts to report the caseload pending in each district court judicial district. Under SB 833 that report would be changed to include details on the caseload by each type of case pending in each district court judicial district, the starting number of cases, the number of cases closed during the year, and the number of cases pending at the end of the year. The resulting report would have to be posted online.
The National Center has several resources related to case processing, measurement, and reporting, including:
- The National Open Court Data Standards (NODS), which look at defining variables, data structure, variable formats, and values.
- CourTools, which have measures related to clearance rates, time to disposition, and age of active pending caseload. There are versions for trial and appellate courts.
- Case Processing Time Standards (CPTS), which is a collection of the statewide case processing time standards that are in current use.
A complete list of all legislation affecting the courts in 2024 can be found on the Gavel to Gavel website (www.ncsc.org/gaveltogavel). You can also sign up for the weekly newsletter published during spring legislative sessions.
Is your court looking to report performance measures? For more information, contact Knowledge@ncsc.org or call 800-616-6164. Follow the National Center for State Courts on Facebook, X, LinkedIn, and Vimeo. For more Trending Topics posts, visit ncsc.org/trendingtopics or subscribe to the LinkedIn newsletter.