A few bright spots as Fix the Court again obtains, examines, rates judicial financial disclosure in all 50 states

New report here | Database here

New Jersey no longer makes requesters of judicial financial disclosures send their requests via snail mail. Colorado now posts its judges’ primary disclosures online. And next year, Hawaii will start requiring jurists who accept reimbursements to report them.

Once again Fix the Court has rated the judicial financial disclosures in the 50 states based on how long it took us to get them — we requested the 2023 and 2024 reports of each state’s chief justice — and the amount of content useful for oversight therein.

The report we’re releasing today, termed “A Slightly Less Sorry State of Disclosure,” reflects the changes in New Jersey, Colorado and Hawaii as well as proposed improvements in Michigan and Vermont, both of which may be adding new disclosure categories to their forms in the near future. (The database with links to all the disclosures is here.)

At a time when government transparency efforts are often treading water or moving in the wrong direction, there wasn’t any real backsliding here: 48 out of 50 states, just like last year (all but Idaho and Utah), require judicial disclosures. (Though the Pennsylvania reports have yet to hit our inbox, we’ve confirmed they’re on the way.) Just as many states (12) gained points in our ratings system for sending in their disclosures more quickly this time as lost points (also 12) for taking longer.

That said, several states’ reporting requirements are hardly useful for oversight purposes. In Wyoming, judges can simply check a box stating they received no “things of value” in the last year, and that box-checking counts as fulfilling their annual disclosure requirement. In North Dakota, judges who receive no income for extra-judicial activities or gifts during a calendar year don’t have to file anything at all.

“Disclosure laws exist for a reason. But if judges’ reports are hard to find or minimal in detail, then they’re of little use for much needed oversight,” FTC’s Gabe Roth said. “All hope is not lost, though. Like with so much of Fix the Court’s work, a sustained, apolitical effort to improve the state of play will yield results.”

In the coming weeks FTC plans to reach out to chief justices and state court administrators in states that received grades below “passable” to advocate that they improve the delivery method and/or contents of their disclosures.

What we (and others) fixed:
On account of FTC making a to-do last year about having to mail a request to Trenton to obtain New Jersey Chief Justice Rabner’s disclosure (which was emailed to us in the end), the N.J. Courts this year decided to “eliminate the whole idea of going through the mail” for requesting and distributing judicial disclosure, per spokesman Pete McAleer. (“There’s no need to do snail mail in 2025,” he added.)

FTC has lambasted the idea of checking a “NO CHANGE” box on Colorado‘s forms — i.e., judges could claim all of their financial info was the same one year to the next and not have to fill out a report, which is not a best practice for oversight.

Turns out, the Colorado Senate had the same idea at roughly the same time, per former state Sen. Steve Fenberg, who co-wrote a bill last year to abolish that practice for all public officials, including judges, and require that everyone’s disclosures be posted online — a bill that Gov. Polis signed last summer. “Still a lot more work to do [on transparency],” Fenberg told us, “but it’s an improvement.”

Four months after our first “Sorry State” report came out last year, the Michigan Supreme Court proposed amendments of Canons 4 and 6 of the state’s Code of Judicial Conduct that would add spousal income, board positions, passive income, debts, stocks/bonds and real estate (plus greater detail on gifts) as required categories of disclosure on judges’ annual reports. FTC’s Roth testified before the Michigan Supreme Court in March strongly in favor of the proposal, and it remains under consideration.

Vermont‘s Judicial Conduct Board, which oversees the filing of disclosures, at our urging conducted a review this past winter of its judges’ report and may recommend that the judiciary include sources of spousal income to future forms. (In no state did we find that supreme court justices and lower court judges within the same org. chart file different annual disclosures, so we use “judge” and “justice” interchangeably for the most part.)

Elsewhere, soon after FTC’s disclosure request to Minnesota last month, the Chief Justice Hudson recalled that “she had inadvertently not filed” the Reports of Compensation for Extra-Judicial Activities, i.e. the secondary reports, for 2023 and 2024. “When she discovered that the reports had not been filed, she filed them promptly,” per the State Court Administrator’s Office. So we fixed that. (She received no gifts and no outside compensation in either year, per those reports.)

And once again FTC convinced Maine not to charge us for the reports, though we were told we should “be ready to pay the usual fee” next year.

One goal for next year has already emerged: reminding states that for security purposes they shouldn’t include judges’ home addresses on the disclosures. In other words, writing “a residence on a quarter-acre plot in Doe Co.” should suffice for oversight purposes, or like the feds, states could allow judges to omit their primary residences from their reports.

Last year’s report | last year’s database | last year’s one-pager

How to score the reports:
States earned between 0 and 10 points based on how quickly FTC received a disclosure after a request — online disclosures received the full 10 — and they earned up to another 10 based on content, i.e., one point each for eight categories included in federal judicial reports: positions; filer’s non-investment income; spouse’s non-investment income; reimbursements; gifts; liabilities; investments; and certification (i.e., a signature acknowledging the information is accurate).

States could also receive half a point each for four pieces of information that are not in the federal reports but should be: value of gifts; value of reimbursements; a separate section on real estate holdings; and an affirmation that the judge attended ethics training during the year. (Content points are doubled, with 20 being the maximum.)

Once Hawaii incorporates reimbursements to its 2025 reports (due out next spring), it will likely receive the full 30 points in FTC’s ratings system, a first. (We asked if it was our 2024 report that compelled the change; a courts spokesman “decline[d] to comment.”) Currently, Hawaii is tied for fifth; Colorado‘s posting of their primary report online vaulted them into the top spot, tied with California at 29 points. The Golden State was tops last year at 29 points, as well.

States were again broken into four groups: “passable” (>24 points), “average” (21-24 points), “poor” (17-20 points) and “failing” (<17 points).

PASSABLE (14 states): California (29 points), Colorado (29), Arkansas (28), Arizona (27.5), Georgia (27), Hawaii (27), Massachusetts (27), New Mexico (27), Washington (27), Wisconsin (27), Virginia (25.5), Rhode Island (25), West Virginia (25) and Texas (24.5).

AVERAGE (8): Illinois (24), Louisiana (24), Oregon (24), North Carolina (23.5), Alaska (23), New Hampshire (23), Delaware (22) and Florida (22).

POOR (16): Indiana (20), Kansas (20), Maine (20), Nevada (20), New York (20), Ohio (20), Pennsylvania (20), Wyoming (20), Connecticut (19), Maryland (19), Montana (19), Nebraska (19), New Jersey (19), Tennessee (17.25), Kentucky (17) and Minnesota (17).

FAILING (12): Missouri (16.5), Mississippi (16), Iowa (15), Michigan (15), Alabama (14), Oklahoma (14), South Carolina (14), South Dakota (14), Vermont (13), North Dakota (10), Idaho (0) and Utah (0).

Additional information:
FTC requested state chief justices’ 2023 and 2024 financial disclosure reports, i.e., the two most recent ones, by simultaneously sending out dozens of emails at noon on June 11, 2025. Those that we knew were online were collected and linked to in our database that week (first tab; column F), and we added all the ones we had to request as they rolled in (first tab; column I).

Twelve states still require a second disclosure: the “primary one” typically covers personal finances, board positions and real estate, with the “secondary one” covering extra-judicial income, gifts and reimbursements. That makes 60 reports in all from the states: 27 of which are posted online (up from 26 last year); 33 of which are not.

Unlike last year, we didn’t include federal judges’ reports in our scoring system. Their reports are posted on a rolling basis in a database throughout the year, making it more difficult to grade the timing portion.