Pandemic-era audio broadcasting for noncriminal federal proceedings scaled back

The federal judiciary’s policymaking arm approved a change Tuesday that allows judges to permanently provide live remote audio access to certain proceedings.

The policy applies to federal civil and bankruptcy proceedings that are not trials and do not involve witness testimony. 

It’s a more restrictive policy than the one implemented during the pandemic, which allowed judges to broadcast audio of any civil and bankruptcy proceedings. That pandemic-era policy is set to expire later this month.

But the new, permanent rule will provide more extensive remote access to federal court proceedings as compared to the judiciary’s pre-COVID policy, which prohibited all audio broadcasting.

“The consensus among the conference was to return to what had been our status quo with an improvement on it, or at least a modification of it,”  U.S. Circuit Judge Lavenski Smith, who chairs the Judicial Conference’s executive committee, said at a Tuesday press briefing.

Lavenski said the Judicial Conference did not, however, act on requests to enable streaming of former President Trump’s two federal criminal trials.

A group of House Democrats made such a request as well as a coalition of judicial and media organizations, including Nexstar Media Group, which owns The Hill.

“The conference itself did not take up that specific request,” said Smith. “The answer to that question at present is controlled by the rules that prohibit cameras in criminal proceedings under Rule 53.”

“And unless action is taken to modify that rule, that will be the status of things that have been happening in federal court,” he said.