A national infrastructure crisis is erasing court records across the country. Maryland can’t tell you whether it has the same problem — because it isn’t looking.
By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
On May 26, 2026, New York’s Court of Appeals confronted a transcript so defective it was essentially fictional. The stenographer assigned to People v. Meyers had filled the official record with “blah blah blah,” “omitted,” and “untranscribable” where testimony should have appeared. Three days of jury selection, opening statements, summations, and the verdict itself were missing entirely. The court called it “utterly inexcusable.”
If the record of a proceeding doesn’t exist, does the right to appeal mean anything?
The ruling landed in the middle of a national reckoning over court reporter shortages that has forced state court systems to confront a basic question: if the record of a proceeding doesn’t exist, does the right to appeal mean anything?
Maryland has not publicly asked itself that question. It should.
What Maryland Does — and Doesn’t — Know
Maryland’s circuit courts converted from stenographers to digital audio recording decades ago — Montgomery County made the switch in 1982, and the system is now statewide. On paper, this means Maryland avoided the California-scale collapse, where 72 percent of family law and civil hearings were conducted with no verbatim record at all between April 2023 and June 2025.
But digital recording and certified transcript are not the same thing. An audio file captures a proceeding. A transcript makes it reviewable. The conversion of one into the other requires a qualified transcriptionist — and Maryland pays those workers less than any other state in the country.
Maryland ranks 50th out of 50 states in court reporter compensation, according to current Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Dead last. In a profession experiencing a 21 percent national workforce decline over the past decade, a state that pays the least is structurally positioned to attract the fewest workers and retain them the shortest time.
The Maryland Judiciary does not publish data on transcript backlogs, unfilled transcriptionist positions, or average wait times for certified transcripts. MDBayNews found no publicly available report tracking how often litigants in Maryland circuit courts are unable to obtain transcripts within the timeframes required to protect their appellate rights.
That absence of data is itself a finding.
The Cliff Edge in Maryland Rule 8-411
Maryland Rule 8-411(a) requires appellants to order transcripts within ten days of filing a notice of appeal. Miss that window and the appeal may be dismissed — not on the merits, but on a procedural default triggered by a deadline the court sets and the court’s own staffing problems may make impossible to meet.
The rule does not pause for backlog. It does not account for audio files that turn out to be inaudible. It does not provide relief for cases where the transcriptionist position handling that courtroom has been vacant for months. It simply sets a deadline and attaches a consequence.
The National Center for State Courts found in August 2025 that 20 percent of court systems nationwide reported delays affecting more than 30 percent of their cases. Maryland has not reported comparable figures — because Maryland does not appear to be collecting them.
That absence of data is itself a finding.
The Transcript Assistance Fund Gap
Maryland does operate a Transcript Assistance Fund for appellants challenging custody or visitation rulings who fall within legal services income guidelines. The fund is real and serves a genuine need. It is also narrow enough to leave the majority of affected litigants unhelped.
The fund addresses cost. It does not address availability.
The fund addresses cost. It does not address availability. A parent who earns slightly above the income cutoff, whose audio recording is degraded, or whose case involves proceedings from several years ago — when the transcriptionist who handled that court may no longer be employed there — is not helped by the fund at all.
And the fund covers only custody and visitation appeals. A litigant appealing a protective order, a contempt finding, or any civil proceeding outside that narrow category is on their own.
What Maryland’s Courts Owe the Public
The administrative apparatus of Maryland’s court system sits under the jurisdiction of the Maryland Judiciary, which reports to the Court of Appeals. The Administrative Office of the Courts produces annual reports covering caseloads, filings, and dispositions. Those reports do not, as a matter of standard practice, include transcript production timelines, backlog figures, or vacancy rates for court reporting and transcription staff.
In California, the transcript shortage became visible because advocates tracked it, litigants documented it, and eventually, the presiding judge of the Los Angeles Superior Court called it a constitutional crisis in public. The California Supreme Court put the data in an opinion. The problem became undeniable because the evidence accumulated somewhere that people could see it.
In Maryland, there is no equivalent accumulation point. The data either isn’t being collected or isn’t being published. The result is that the Maryland Judiciary can neither confirm nor deny whether its transcript infrastructure is functioning adequately — which means the public cannot know whether the right to appeal a Maryland court ruling is real or theoretical for litigants who lack the resources to force the question.
That is not a defensible position for a court system to occupy.
What Should Happen Next
The Maryland Judiciary should publish, at minimum, annual data on transcript request volume, average fulfillment timelines, unfilled transcriptionist positions, and the number of appeals in which transcript unavailability was cited as a factor in dismissal or delay. The Administrative Office of the Courts has the infrastructure to collect this information. The question is whether there is institutional will to do so.
The General Assembly has jurisdiction over the court system’s funding and accountability obligations. A legislative request for a performance audit of transcript production timelines — modeled on the kind of access-to-justice audits other states have conducted — would be a reasonable starting point.
Until then, Maryland litigants appealing court rulings are operating on the assumption that the record exists, that it is accurate, and that it will be available when they need it. People v. Meyers is a reminder of what happens when those assumptions are wrong. Maryland has not checked whether they are.
Sources: People v. Meyers, New York Court of Appeals (May 26, 2026); California Judicial Branch hearing data (April 2023 – June 2025); National Center for State Courts workforce survey (August 2025); Bureau of Labor Statistics occupational employment data; Maryland Rule 8-411(a); Maryland Judiciary Transcript Assistance Fund guidelines.
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