Montana judicial evaluators vote to pursue rulemaking to add evaluation criteria under SB 45

The Montana Judicial Performance Evaluation Commission voted to authorize additional rulemaking to expand the criteria used in judge evaluations under Senate Bill 45.

Counsel Jaya Hupp told commissioners that the statute and Montana Code provisions set required criteria but that "if the commissioners would like to add additional criteria, then the commission would just need to vote, obviously, to do that, but then would need to go through the rule making process to add those additional criteria." Commissioners approved a motion allowing staff to draft and seek rulemaking authority; the chair noted the motion passed on a recorded voice vote.

Hupp outlined the next steps: the commission must engage the bill sponsor, work with a DOJ liaison, submit proposed rules to the Secretary of State for publication and accept public comment and potential hearings before final adoption. He warned that to have rules adopted and published by January 2027 the commission needs to begin the process promptly and that rulemaking timelines leave the commission dependent on other agencies’ workloads. "You may choose to have a hearing," Hupp said; "then after that, you would go through the process of ultimately adopting those rules, and then, they would get published."

Commissioners discussed whether potential additional metrics (case overturn rates, backlog management, continuing education and selection methods for constitutional cases) should be formal criteria or treated as contextual information under the statute’s broad categories (administrative performance, judicial conduct, legal ability). Several members favored collecting some of these data for public information even if they are not heavy-weighted in the formal evaluation.

The vote authorizes staff and counsel to prepare draft rules and engage the sponsor and other state offices needed to begin formal rulemaking.