Bill to reorganize appeals from justice and municipal courts moves through hearings

House Bill 24 60, introduced to the House Judiciary Committee on Feb. 11, would reorganize and standardize statutes governing appeals from justice and municipal courts across Oregon.

The bill’s sponsor and staff described HB 24 60 as a detailed, technical reorganization intended to clarify jurisdictional questions, streamline procedures for notices of appeal and docketing, standardize recordkeeping and public-record designations, and set out the circuit court’s scope of review on appeals from local courts.

Krista Obold Eshelman, supervising appellate attorney at Youth Rights and Justice and commissioner on the Oregon Law Commission, told the committee that the measure is the product of a multi‑year, consensus‑driven effort. “For the past five years, many dedicated volunteers, with a broad spectrum of experience in the systems have been working on this bill to modernize and make the statutory scheme for appeals more cohesive and user friendly,” Eshelman said. She noted the work group focused on making the statutes easier to use for people who appear in local courts without lawyers and that the measure includes a dash‑1 amendment with mostly clerical clarifications and one substantive change addressing resentencing after guilty or no‑contest pleas.

The bill would: clarify that local court jurisdiction over animal abuse does not extend to felony cases; require municipal courts that hear constitutional challenges to decide constitutionality before addressing other merits; prescribe when a defendant may transfer a case to circuit court after an adverse ruling on a pretrial motion (with local prosecutor consent); clarify that conditional guilty pleas are not allowed in local courts; standardize recordkeeping and docketing as public records; and direct the state court administrator to create a model notice of appeal form. The measure sets a general operative date of Jan. 1, 2026, with most provisions taking effect 90 days after the legislative session ends, and listed limited sections with different operative timing.

Juliet Britton, presiding judge at Beaverton Municipal Court and president of the Oregon Judges Association, testified in support and said the bill helps ensure appeals are handled consistently across the state. “House Bill 24 60 helps us achieve that goal by providing clear process of appeals, thus ensuring due process for all litigants,” Britton said. Justin Kidd, elected justice of the peace for Marion County and representative of the Oregon Justices of the Peace Association, also supported the measure and described the current statutory scheme as “a bowl of tangled spaghetti,” saying the reorganization would demystify appeals for pro se litigants and preserve the utility of justice courts by limiting appeals from default judgments to questions of whether the lower court correctly entered default rather than granting an automatic new trial.

Committee members asked whether additional work will follow to modernize other, older statutory chapters governing local courts; witnesses said the law commission and work group intend to continue studying remaining statute chapters. Eshelman described the dash‑1 amendment’s substantive change: it would require that a claim of legal error be included in any notice of appeal that follows a guilty or no‑contest plea, a response to concerns raised by a municipal prosecutor about resentencing.

No formal committee vote on HB 24 60 occurred during the Feb. 11 hearing. Witnesses asked the committee to pass the bill; Eshelman said the work group respectfully requested that HB 24 60 be passed.