New court-level data under HB 2384 shows most courts meeting clearance-rate benchmark; dashboards due in January

The Texas Office of Court Administration (OCA) reported initial results from court-level reporting required under House Bill 2384 on the Judicial Council’s meeting on Dec. 13, 2024, with staff saying most courts that have submitted data meet the 90% clearance-rate benchmark. Alejandro Pena, an OCA analyst, said the agency has received and begun validating the new court-level submissions and will publish interactive dashboards in early to mid-January.

The OCA presentation explained why the new data differ from previously reported county-level totals and how the information will be used. "We have been collecting data for many years, but it has all been at the county level and in aggregate counts," Pena said, describing how HB 2384 requires reporting at the individual court and case-type level. The nut graf: the court-level reports are intended to show where case processing is delayed and to give regional presiding judges a fact base to deploy resources where clearance rates fall below 90%.

At an initial review, OCA staff reported that about 62% of court/case-type submissions show clearance rates at or above 90%, with another 12% in the 80–89% range. OCA said criminal case submissions have the highest share meeting the 90% threshold (about 74–75% by the agency’s count), while civil, family and juvenile case types lag in part because some lower percentages are driven by small raw counts in some rural courts. The agency noted that probate, mental-health and guardianship cases were excluded from certain slides because those case types pose special data-capture challenges and historically have not recorded dispositions in the same way.

OCA staff said the due date for the first court-level reports was Nov. 1. The agency is still receiving initial and corrected submissions and expects continued revisions as local case-management systems are updated. Pena said courts and vendors have been updating systems for roughly 18 months and that OCA’s internal checks have identified errors that clerks are correcting.

The report also noted missing or delayed data from large counties. Angela (OCA staff) said district court totals likely rose for FY24 but that the agency is missing a year of criminal information from Dallas County and three months of criminal information from Bexar County, and that adding those submissions would likely increase district-level counts.

Several members discussed how to use the new measure. Megan (OCA counsel) said HB 2384 enables regional presiding judges to identify courts not meeting the 90% performance measure and to deploy additional resources — for example, visiting judges or caseflow management training — although the bill carried no dedicated funding for those interventions. "The regional presiding judges can deploy additional resources to those courts," Megan said, adding that the judges will examine local context such as space, reporters and other constraints before recommending funding requests to the legislature.

OCA told the council it plans to present the new dashboards next week to the presiding judges and expects to publish the dashboards on the agency website in early to mid-January. Staff also cautioned that border counties with heavy Operation Lone Star caseloads will face structural difficulty reaching the 90% threshold in the near term because of unusually high volumes.

Council members urged caution about unintended consequences of performance measures — including docket clean-up efforts, short-term case management changes that can distort statistics, and resource disparities between counties — and asked OCA to include explanatory context alongside the public dashboards.

The OCA presentation and the council discussion are intended to be the first public accounting of court-level clearance rates under HB 2384; OCA said reporting and data quality work will continue into the next fiscal year as vendors and clerks refine submissions.

Ending: The council did not take formal action on the data during the meeting; OCA will return with the dashboards and further analysis for presiding judges and the council in the coming weeks.