Across the country, courts are struggling to produce reliable records of what happens inside their courtrooms.
That should concern every American. Whether someone is accused of a crime, fighting for custody, defending a business, or appealing a judgment, the ability to challenge what happened in court depends on an accurate record. When that record is delayed, incomplete, or unusable, constitutional rights can become promises on paper.
This is a national constitutional crisis.
California demonstrates the scale of the problem. Between April 2023 and June 2025, approximately 2.04 million family-law, probate, and unlimited civil hearings — 72% of those studied — proceeded without a verbatim record. California’s judiciary warns that the shortage can leave litigants without the record needed to appeal.
New York identified the same danger years ago. A 2021 state court report found that senior court reporters had declined from 600 in 2017 to 510 in 2021. It warned that inadequate staffing “all but ensures delays” and recommended hiring nearly 200 additional senior reporters, expanding real-time transcription, improving oversight, and electronically filing transcripts statewide.
New York knew the risks but did not address them with sufficient urgency.
The failure became unmistakable in People v. Meyers. Meyers was convicted in July 2017 and sentenced to 23 years to life. During his appeal, counsel discovered that major portions of the trial record were missing or unintelligible. The stenographer had repeatedly entered “blah blah blah,” “omitted,” and “untranscribable” instead of what was said.
In February 2021, the Appellate Division called the record “deplorable” and ordered a reconstruction hearing rather than a new trial. Court personnel attempted to recreate the proceedings from testimony, documents, and the trial judge’s notes. The Appellate Division affirmed in March 2025. In May 2026 — nearly nine years after sentencing — the Court of Appeals also affirmed, calling the transcript “utterly inexcusable” but finding the reconstruction sufficient.
That is not an adequate solution. New York identified staffing, training, and oversight failures in 2021, yet Meyers’s appeal was resolved by reconstructing a years-old trial rather than preventing another failure. Reconstruction is an emergency remedy, not a substitute for an accurate contemporaneous record. Judges retire. Attorneys leave. Notes disappear. Memories fade.
This growing civil rights crisis opens the doors for discrimination.
The case of Marc Fishman, a disabled father of four in Westchester County, should alarm anyone who may ever need a court to correct its own mistakes.
Fishman spent approximately seven and a half years seeking usable transcripts connected to New Rochelle City Court proceedings from December 2018 and January 2019. He has assembled correspondence, transcript requests, and court records documenting his efforts.
A public federal decision recounts Fishman’s requests for accommodations including a note-taker, large-print documents, a disability aide, and assistance related to his cognitive and hearing disabilities. It also recounts his allegation that those requests were denied.
Fishman’s case is not merely a dispute over paperwork. When the official record is delayed or defective, a litigant may be unable to prove that an objection was raised, an accommodation was denied, or a ruling was misstated. The institution being challenged then controls the evidence needed to challenge it.
People with disabilities may face especially severe harm because they can depend on transcription both to understand proceedings and to appeal them.
And this threat applies to everyone. Any defendant, parent, tenant, employee, business owner, or crime victim may need an accurate transcript to protect a right.
States should expand court-reporter recruitment, apprenticeships, real-time transcription training, and qualified voice-writing programs. Courts should preserve secure audio backups where legally permitted, notify litigants when no verbatim record will exist, and enforce deadlines for producing and correcting transcripts.
KAGAN’S CLIMATE CONFLICT IS OBVIOUS — RECUSAL SHOULDN’T BE OPTIONAL
When government prosecutes a person, separates a family, or resolves a life-altering dispute, it must preserve an accurate account of what it did.
No usable transcript means no meaningful appeal.
James Christopher is the founder of James Christopher Communications and works with Protect New Yorkers to advance disability access and court accountability.