Bloomberg Law
December 14, 2023, 10:00 AM UTC

Low Pay Plagues Judicial Recruitment in New Texas Business Court

Ryan Autullo
Ryan Autullo
Correspondent

Texas’s refusal to boost the salaries of its judges—who are among the lowest paid in the country—may be complicating the state’s effort to build out its new business court, opening in 2024.

Gov. Greg Abbott (R) must recruit 16 judges for the business court, which was authorized by lawmakers to handle complex business disputes and was seen as an effort to funnel these matters to a group of judges handpicked by Abbott.

He’s now stuck searching for candidates with 10 years or more of experience in complex civil business litigation, who are willing to accept a starting salary of $140,000. The court is scheduled to come online next Sept. 1, and Abbott has yet to announce any appointments.

“It’s going to be a problem,” Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan Hecht said. “The pay is going to be very unattractive to accomplished lawyers that would handle these big cases.”

Other states like New York and Kansas are turning to greater compensation to attract and retain quality people to their benches. But that effort in the Texas legislature fell short this year.

For state court judges, the starting annual base pay is the same as it was a decade ago. The figure trails the median bench salary in 48 other states and in Guam, where judges make over $144,000.

An Abbott spokesperson declined to comment on the judge searches.

In the nine years since Texas Association of District Judges president Karin Crump took the bench in Austin, the cost of living has exploded. It’s become extremely challenging to raise a family on a judge’s income in many places in Texas, she said, leading to a decline in experienced and diverse candidates.

“You need judges who have handled the type of cases they’ll preside over,” Crump said, and Texas will struggle to get them without a bump in pay.

Legislative Efforts

Texas has increased base pay for judges just three times in the past 25 years, the last time in 2013.

Earlier this year, lawmakers tried to tackle the issue while separately authorizing its new business court and another new court to handle appeals in cases involving state agencies and state officials.

A bill (HB2779) from Rep. Jeff Leach (R) to increase the starting salary by 22% over the next two years skated through the House, passing unanimously on a final vote of 142-0. Then it went to the Senate and unraveled.

The proposal would have increased the base salary for district court judges to $155,400 in 2024 and to $172,494 in 2025. That second amount is just under the average pay for all state general jurisdiction judges in the country. Appeals court justices would’ve also seen a pay bump, as their salaries are tied to the salaries of district court judges.

Sen. Joan Huffman (R), who chairs the Senate committee that considered the bill, countered with a weaker pay increase, reflecting concerns she had voiced about the work ethic of the state’s judiciary. When the two chambers couldn’t come to terms, the pay raise died.

The next legislative session begins in January 2025.

Texas pays state court judges based on a three-tiered experience system—$140,000 for newcomers, $154,000 for four-plus years of service, and $168,000 for eight-plus years of service. A judge that reaches 12-plus years gets an additional $8,400 a year for longevity.

Unlike Texas, some states pay all judges the same regardless of experience on the bench.

The only states with lower median judge pay than Texas’s $154,000 are Montana, Alabama, Maine, West Virginia, and Kansas, according to data compiled by the National Center for State Courts. Beginning in 2025, Kansas will leapfrog Texas by tying judge pay to that of federal district court judges.

In Texas, a judge’s home county can choose to give a salary supplement capped at $18,000.

Performance Concerns

Historically, the Texas legislature has been hesitant to increase judge pay, as the annual retirement pay for state lawmakers is tied to judicial salaries. The concern is that raising pay for judges places legislators in an uncomfortable spot politically by having to defend what amounts to a pay raise for themselves.

“That is a battle that we have always fought,” state district court Judge Alfonso Charles (R) said.

But this year’s failed legislative effort sought to quell that concern by detaching lawmakers’ retirement pay from the judicial pay raise.

The annual cost to the state came in at $51 million, a fraction of Texas’s near-$33 billion budget surplus.

Hecht, the supreme court chief justice, said that Huffman had expressed concerns about the performance of judges, particularly as it related to bail decisions and docket backlogs coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic. Huffman’s failed version included a raise only for a judge who has been on the bench for over 12 years.

Hecht called Huffman “very reasonable” but pushed back against the docket concerns, noting that clearance rates have returned to pre-pandemic levels.

“You just can’t drag jurors down to a courthouse and put their health at risk just because you’re trying to keep up a docket,” Hecht said.

Huffman didn’t respond to a request for comment.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ryan Autullo in Austin at rautullo@bloombergindustry.com

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Stephanie Gleason at sgleason@bloombergindustry.com; Alex Clearfield at aclearfield@bloombergindustry.com

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