Supreme Court requests $173 million for 2026; launches public access to circuit court records

Chief Justice John Wootton told the West Virginia Senate Finance Committee on March 10, 2025, that the Judicial Branch is requesting $173,043,683 for fiscal year 2026 to operate West Virginia’s unified judicial system and support courts across all 55 counties.

Wootton said the request covers the full judicial branch — the Supreme Court of Appeals, the intermediate court of appeals, circuit, family and magistrate courts, and court staff — and emphasized staffing, technology and treatment-court funding as priorities. “Our budget is precisely calculated and designed to only ask for the funds we actually need to operate our court system,” Wootton said.

The budget request appears in the context of the branch’s ongoing modernization work. Wootton announced that, as of March 10, the court has “launched online public access to electronic circuit court records,” allowing the public to search statewide civil and criminal circuit court records back to 1999; searches are free, and documents may carry a small transactional fee. He said attorneys will have expanded access for cases where they are counsel of record.

Why it matters: the requested funding pays for personnel and services that operate courts in every county. Wootton told senators that 84.5% of the judicial budget is for personal services and benefits, 53% pays for lower (circuit, family and magistrate) courts and probation accounts for about 21% of the budget. He said the total increase requested for fiscal year 2026 is just over $6 million and that the judicial branch represents…