California Supreme Court orders electronic recording when court reporters unavailable

The California Supreme Court ruled Monday that trial courts must provide low-income civil litigants with an official verbatim record of court proceedings, including through electronic recording when a court reporter is unavailable.

In a unanimous opinion authored by Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero, the court said California's chronic shortage of court reporters cannot leave litigants who cannot afford private reporters without a meaningful record for appeal.

"Courts have no discretion in this regard," Guerrero wrote. "It is their duty under Jameson and the in forma pauperis doctrine to provide indigent litigants with some way of obtaining an official verbatim record of proceedings."

The decision in Family Violence Appellate Project v. Superior Court, S288176, grants a writ of mandate against the superior courts in Los Angeles, Santa Clara, Contra Costa and San Diego counties.

The dispute arose from a statewide shortage of certified shorthand reporters that has left hundreds of thousands of civil, family and probate hearings without transcripts. A 2024 California Access to Justice Commission report estimated that more than 1 million hearings and trials in unlimited civil, family and probate cases occurred during the preceding year without courts providing a means of creating an official transcript.

California law generally prohibits electronic recording from being used as the official record in most civil proceedings. But the Supreme Court held that courts possess inherent authority under the in forma pauperis doctrine to create an exception when necessary to ensure meaningful access to justice for litigants unable to afford private reporters.

The ruling builds on the court's 2018 decision in Jameson v. Desta, which required courts that stopped routinely providing official reporters in civil cases to make reporters available to indigent litigants upon request. The court said Monday that experience since Jameson demonstrated that guarantee had become "illusory" because courts frequently lack enough reporters to fulfill those requests.

Court reporter organizations argued that electronic recordings can be less reliable than certified shorthand reporters and blamed some shortages on court hiring and management practices. The Supreme Court declined to resolve those disputes, saying the cause of the shortage was beside the point.

"It is sufficient to note that a verbatim record created by electronic recording is better than no record at all," Guerrero wrote.

The ruling requires courts, upon request, to provide litigants who cannot afford private reporters access to an official verbatim record in all civil cases, using electronic recording when an official reporter or reporter pro tempore is unavailable.