January 25, 2024
By Bill Raftery
Amid the widespread use of remote or virtual hearings during the COVID pandemic, many states are now looking at changes to court rules and statutes to make those temporary proceedings permanent. Such changes come generally in two main forms.
- Permissive rules/laws: These are laws that permit remote or virtual hearings. During the pandemic, many rules and court orders allowing for such hearings were written temporarily, often with specific dates by which the rule/order expired. These new permissive rules and statutes are written to permanently allow but not require remote and virtual hearings.
- Presumptive rules/laws: While the first category focused on allowing for remote or virtual hearings, some states have adopted court rules to require, or at least make a presumption, that certain case types must be remote or virtual. Minnesota, for example, adopted such an order in June 2022 that made many noncriminal proceedings at the trial court level presumptively remote “unless the district court finds that exceptional circumstances exist that justify a departure from the presumption.”
A 39-page detailed report produced by the National Center for State Courts shows the authority for remote or virtual court proceedings. Because most states rely on permissive rules/laws, it becomes difficult to indicate how many states have remote or virtual hearings because all states have at least some rules allowing some hearings to be remote or virtual. As the NCSC report and news reports indicate, such rules will often leave the question of how and when to individual circuits/districts or courts, or on a judge-by-judge, case-by-case basis. For circuits/districts, courts, or judges looking to improve how they conduct such proceedings, NCSC’s Remote Proceeding Toolkit was updated on January 1, 2024, to address such questions.
What rules does your court have regarding remote/virtual hearings? Are they permitted, presumptive, or some combination? 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.