Without a transcript, there's nothing to appeal. That's the reality the Family Violence Appellate Project's clients kept running into. When a court reporter wasn't available, they had two options: wait longer for a hearing in an urgent custody or domestic violence matter, or move forward without a record and give up any chance to challenge the outcome. Most chose to move forward. A faster hearing mattered more than a preserved right to appeal, even though it meant the judge's ruling would be final no matter what.
In a new piece for Bloomberg Law, Steno Director of Legal Solutions Joe Stephens, JD, breaks down what the California Supreme Court’s decision in Family Violence Appellate Project v. Superior Court of Contra Costa County, and describes where the ruling still leaves courts and litigants without answers.
On August 10, the court held that when an indigent litigant requests an official record and shows an inability to pay for a private reporter, the trial court must provide one. If a live stenographer isn't available, an electronic recording is required. No formal fee waiver application has to precede that relief.
But Joe describes what the decision does not do, and why that distinction matters for how the ruling gets covered:
The court didn't strike down California's statutory restriction on electronic recording in civil courtrooms. That law is still on the books. Instead, applying long-standing in forma pauperis principles, the court read an implied exception into the statute to keep the courtroom doors open to poor litigants.
Joe explains why this shouldn’t be seen as a win for recording technology over stenography. Live reporters stay at the top of the hierarchy, with recording designated as a fallback for when one isn't available. He connects that nuance to why the court reporters' own advocates read the ruling as a win too:
Under the mandate, courts can no longer treat court reporter recruitment as an optional budgetary line item. Because they are now legally obligated to provide an official record, trial courts will have to aggressively recruit and hire graduates emerging from reporting programs.
The piece also lays out the scale of the underlying staffing crisis the ruling responds to, including the fact that roughly 72% of California's civil, family, and probate hearings ran with no official record in the first three months of 2026, and that the state's trial courts report needing 458 additional full-time reporters just to meet current demand.
Joe closes with what the ruling leaves open: who pays for transcription costs for indigent parties, how exhaustively a trial court must search for a live reporter before switching to recording, and whether every civil courtroom is even equipped to record. The decision sets a floor, but it doesn't finish the job.