Judiciary Funding Absent in House, Senate Covid-19 Relief Bills

The House and Senate seem to agree on at least one thing in their initial proposals for additional pandemic relief: no extra funding for federal courts.

Neither the House Democrats’ package, which was approved by the chamber in May, nor the recently introduced package from Senate Republicans includes the $36.6 million in additional funding the Administrative Offices of the U.S. Courts asked for in April.

The administrative arm of the judiciary said it needs the additional funding to address “emergent needs,” including enhanced courtroom cleaning, health screenings, and teleworking infrastructure.

While the funding was left out of the proposals, it might not be off the table.

“Now that Senate Republicans have finally agreed to negotiate, the Judiciary request will be one of many additional needs that can be addressed in the resulting legislation,” said Evan Hollander, spokesman for House Appropriations Committee Democrats.

Hollander said the funding wasn’t included in the House Democrats’ bill, the Heroes Act, because the request was sent late in the drafting process. Senate Republicans had a different reason for excluding it.

“Examination of the relevant accounts showed sufficient headroom to absorb the costs, which has been the case thus far,” a GOP aide said. “We’ll continue to monitor the situation.”

The latest bills follow the $2 trillion pandemic relief package, the CARES Act, that was enacted in March. The CARES Act provided the judiciary with $7.5 million for IT and testing and treatment costs in the probation and pretrial services program.

Federal courts were closed by the pandemic and, like much of the country, have adopted virtual means of conducting their business like video conferencing and allowing staff to work from home. Those changes have associated costs, the courts’ administrative office said in an April 28 letter to House and Senate appropriators.

“We will keep trying to convince Congress of the critical need for this funding, which is for costs related to the safe resumption of grand juries and jury trials and other activities vital to our system of justice,” an AO spokesperson said.