Gov proposes eliminating Supreme Court justice cap

Governor Kathy Hochul proposed eliminating the state’s cap on Supreme Court justices as part of her State of the State speech on Tuesday, Jan. 9, 2024. Mike Groll, Don Pollard, Susan Watts/Office of Governor Kathy Hochul

By Jacob Kaye

With persistent backlogs clogging up the state’s court system, Governor Kathy Hochul as part of her State of the State address proposed bringing in as many Supreme Court justices as needed to cut through the stalled cases.

The governor, who gave her annual State of the State address from the floor of the state legislature on Tuesday, proposed a constitutional amendment to eliminate the current cap on the number of Supreme Court justices in New York.

The proposal comes after years of a growing call from those in the legal industry to eliminate the longtime cap.

Hamstrung by the state’s constitution, New York’s courts have struggled over the decades to keep up with the state’s growing population, advocates have said. Judges have been stretched thin, backlogs have grown and justice has become more difficult to obtain as a result.

“Our court system has been plagued by delays and backlogs that interfere with the swift administration of justice and exacerbate our public safety challenges,” Hochul said in her State of the State address book. “Part of the problem is an antiquated constraint, embedded in the constitution, on the number of Supreme Court judges, which has a cascading impact on both Supreme Courts and lower courts.”

Currently, the constitution allows for one Supreme Court justice per 50,000 residents of a judicial district. The cap was originally enacted in 1846, and later amended in 1961.

The governor called the formula for determining the cap “grossly outdated,” and said it “fails to account for the growing demands on the courts in each judicial district and, despite the obvious need as evidenced by the backlog in cases and decline in jury trials, constrains the legislature from authorizing a sufficient number of judges in certain counties.”

Though the legislature is currently unable to drastically change the number of Supreme Court justices in any one particular district, they have been able to increase the number of justices in the state over time.

The formula currently allows for 43 elected Supreme Court justices in the 11th Judicial District, which covers Queens County. Six years ago, there were only 39 Supreme Court justices allowed in the district, per the constitution. However, the legislature was able to make statutory changes, adding an additional justice in 2018, 2019, 2021 and 2022.

Statewide, there were 14 Supreme Court justices added in 2022 and in 2021, three added in 2019 and four added in 2018. Additional legislation has been passed and signed into law to increase the number of judges in the city’s Family Courts.

But in her State of the State book, Hochul said that without the elimination of the cap, there will continue to be fewer judges than the number needed to run an efficient court system. The elimination of the cap would also eliminate the need to draw judges from the lower courts up to the Supreme Court, the governor said.

“The practice of pulling judges from the lower courts to serve as acting Supreme Court justices has exacerbated delays elsewhere in the system, deferring justice for too many New Yorkers,” the governor said.

In 2022, there were a dozen acting Supreme Court judges serving in Queens County Supreme Court, Criminal Term and one serving in the borough’s Civil Term, according to the Office of Court Administration. Statewide, there were 317 acting Supreme Court judges in 2022.

Should Hochul’s proposal move forward and do so successfully, it will some time before the cap is actually eliminated.

In order to get a constitutional amendment ratified, a bill with the proposal must be passed by both the State Senate and State Assembly during two consecutive legislative sessions. Then, the amendment must be approved by voters during an election.

Though the process will play out over the course of at least two to three years, advocates celebrated the fact that Hochul had gotten the ball rolling on the cap’s elimination on Tuesday.

“We are encouraged the governor has expressed an interest in expanding the number of elected Supreme Court justices to ensure the prompt and efficient provision of justice for litigants in New York,” said Hon. Mary M. Farley, the president of the Association of Justices of the Supreme Court of the State of New York.

“We look forward to the opportunity to discuss this proposal with legislators and other interested parties,” Farley added.

When asked about the plan to eliminate the Supreme Court justice cap, Al Baker, a spokesperson for the Unified Court System said the UCS “looks forward to reviewing the proposals the governor outlined in her speech today.”

“We are eager to continue working together with the governor and the legislature in tackling crucial issues and building the strongest, most accessible judiciary possible across New York State,” Baker added.

The governor this week proposed eliminating the cap on the number of Supreme Court justices in each judicial district. Eagle file photo by Walter Karling

The proposal to eliminate the cap was recently outlined in a New York City Bar Association report published in the fall of last year. The NYCBA strongly advocated for the elimination of the cap in the report.

“Throughout its history, New York State has struggled with an insufficient number of judicial seats necessitating stopgap measures that have only resulted in a complicated, overworked, and confusing court system that fails to provide justice to all,” the report, titled “Repeal the Cap and Do the Math,” read. “The dire need for additional judges overall is a function of the chronic failure to provide adequate judicial resources to New York’s Unified Court System.”

“On a fundamental level, the lack of judicial resources stems largely from the constitutionally prescribed method by which the New York State legislature determines the number of justices that can be elected to the state’s trial court of general jurisdiction — the New York State Supreme Court,” the report continued. “It is undisputed that the constitutional cap on the number of elected Supreme Court Justices must be eliminated.”

In addition to creating a constitutional amendment to repeal the state’s cap on Supreme Court justices, the NYCBA made a number of other recommendations that they claim will result in a better staffed judiciary in their report.

The bar association recommended that the legislature pass a bill that would codify a mandatory and regular assessment of the courts’ specific needs – currently, the legislature assesses the state’s judicial needs every 10 years alongside the release of the census, however, the city bar association claimed that the review is not always completed. The bar association also recommended that there be more detailed and frequent reporting on the judiciary compiled by the chief administrative judge, so as to better aid the legislature in their own assessment of the courts.

The NYCBA also said that they believed the legislature should codify a system for assessing the judicial needs of each of the state’s courts. That system should not only include population, but also the courts’ caseloads, the complexity of the cases that come before the courts and the number of a courts’ unrepresented litigants.

Lastly, the bar association recommended that the legislature make an effort to boost the number of judges in courts other than the state’s Supreme Courts. Only the state’s Supreme Courts’ judicial numbers are defined by the constitution.