Why MCR 8.119 Needs to Change: My Public Comment to the Michigan Judicial Council

On Monday, August 24, the Michigan Judicial Council is holding a virtual public comment session on its 2026-29 Strategic Agenda. I registered to speak. I spend most of my working hours reviewing dockets, orders, transcripts, and recordings for Clutch Justice, and the comment I plan to give is narrow by design: fix the rule that lets access to a public court’s own recording of a public proceeding depend on local discretion.

This piece lays out the argument before I make it, walks through the court rule and the litigation that has made this a live question, and tells you how to register your own comment if you want one on the record too.

What the Michigan Judicial Council Is Deciding

The Michigan Judicial Council makes recommendations to the Michigan Supreme Court on the administration of justice statewide, including the judicial branch’s strategic plan. The Council released its first strategic agenda in 2022 and is now finalizing its second, covering 2026 through 2029. Six priority goals anchor the draft agenda: trial court funding, technology, the public’s experience and effective problem resolution, fairness and accountability, public trust and understanding, and workforce excellence.

Public comment closes the loop before the Council finalizes both the Strategic Agenda and its companion Operational Plan. That is the forum I registered to use, and it is the same forum anyone else can use, whether the interest is court recordings, funding, technology, or any of the other five priorities.

The Rule That Creates the Patchwork

MCR 8.119 governs court records and reports across Michigan’s trial courts. Subrule (D) defines case records, and subrule (H) sets the statewide standard for accessing them. Recordings do not fall under that definition. They are addressed separately, under MCR 8.119(H)(8)(b), which classifies them as court records but does not extend the same statewide access standard to them.

The practical result is that access to recordings is delegated to each court’s local administrative order. The State Bar of Michigan’s own 2024 memo on this issue describes the current framework as creating inconsistency in court practice, and flags a potential constitutional defect the Sixth Circuit has already identified in this area. Some courts allow supervised viewing on request. Others provide only a written transcript. None of that variation turns on anything about the underlying proceeding. It turns on which county’s local order applies.

What a Recording Shows That a Transcript Doesn’t

I read transcripts for a living, and I have also compared what an order says happened against what a recording shows actually happened. A transcript captures words. It does not capture tone, interruption, or whether a party was actually given the chance to speak before a ruling came down. Video does not create judicial misconduct. It documents it, and it documents its absence just as clearly. A recording can corroborate a judge’s account as easily as it can contradict a litigant’s complaint. That cuts both ways, which is part of why I think the presumption should run toward access rather than local discretion.

For Me, Lack of Access Is Personal

This is not an abstract policy problem for me. I have watched a loved one encounter it from inside the system, where the ability to see a recording, receive a filing, or review the record is not a matter of convenience. It can determine whether a person understands what has happened in their own case and whether they have a meaningful opportunity to respond.

In my incarcerated loved one’s case, Barry County Judge Michael Schipper has blocked access to court videos and records. The consequences have not ended with the denial of those materials. To this day, the Barry County court has failed to properly serve filings on my loved one while incarcerated. A person cannot respond to a filing they do not receive, and they cannot meaningfully challenge an account of a hearing when the court controls access to the best record of what occurred.

And like many others who have dared to challenge Barry County’s behavior, I faced retaliation after I spoke up. That experience sharpened the stakes for me: when access depends on the same local institutions whose conduct is being questioned, people may be forced to choose between remaining silent and risking consequences for demanding a complete and accurate record.

That experience is one reason I reject the idea that access can safely depend on local discretion. From the outside, a county-by-county rule may look like an administrative inconsistency. From inside a case, it can become a barrier between a person and the information needed to understand, protect, and exercise their rights. Public access matters, but access by the people whose liberty and legal interests are directly at stake is even more fundamental.

Hallman v. Reeds and the Sixth Circuit

Dr. Samantha Hallman, a university professor and judicial transparency advocate, sought recordings of proceedings in Oakland County’s district and circuit courts beginning in 2022. Both courts denied her requests in part or in whole under local administrative orders restricting access. In April 2025, the ACLU of Michigan filed suit on her behalf in the Eastern District of Michigan against Oakland County judges Travis Reeds, Lisa Asadoorian, and Jeffery Matis, arguing that restricting access to recordings of open proceedings violates the First Amendment.

In late October 2025, U.S. District Judge Brandy McMillion granted the defendants’ motion to dismiss, finding no constitutional right to access, copy, or disseminate court recordings and dismissing the case with prejudice. The dismissal is now on appeal. Briefing at the Sixth Circuit concluded in early 2026, and oral argument is scheduled for October. Dr. Hallman is a friend, and I support her case, but the outcome of a First Amendment claim in federal appellate court is a different question from what a state rulemaking body can simply choose to do. The Michigan Judicial Council does not need to wait on the Sixth Circuit to recommend that MCR 8.119 be amended.

The Accountability Argument

When someone files a complaint with the Judicial Tenure Commission, an investigator has to reconstruct what happened in a hearing, often from competing recollections and a transcript that cannot convey tone or context. If the court that held the hearing already has a recording of it, that reconstruction work is often unnecessary. A recording can corroborate an allegation, disprove it, or supply context almost immediately. That protects the person who filed the complaint. It also protects the judge whose conduct is in question, since a recording can resolve an allegation a transcript alone cannot.

What Presumptive Access Would Not Change

Presumptive access is not the same as unrestricted access. It does not mean abandoning legitimate protections for sealed, confidential, or legally restricted proceedings. Michigan courts already close proceedings when the facts of a case justify it, and those closures would remain intact under a presumptive access standard. The change I am proposing applies only to recordings of proceedings that were public when they happened. If the public had a right to be in the room, the public should have a right to the court’s own recording of what occurred in that room. Nothing about that principle requires reopening categories of proceedings that are properly closed today.

My Comment to the Council, in Full

This is the statement I plan to deliver on August 24. I am reproducing it here in full because the exact language is the record.

How to Weigh In

You do not need a law degree or a docket full of cases to put a comment on the record here. If you have watched a hearing you could not later obtain a recording of, or if you simply think a statewide judiciary should not have county-by-county rules for something as basic as its own recordings, the Council wants to hear it. Register to reserve a speaking slot before August 21 at 5 p.m., or submit written comments at any time using the public comment form linked in the Michigan Supreme Court’s media advisory. Written comments have no deadline, so there is no reason to wait until the last minute or to skip it because the meeting date has passed.

I will publish the outcome of this comment period as the Council moves toward finalizing the 2026-29 Strategic Agenda, along with whatever the Sixth Circuit does with Hallman v. Reeds in October.