Texas Judiciary Asks for 30% Raise

As the 2025 Texas legislative session approaches, the Texas judiciary is asking for 30% base pay raises as bench vacancies go unfilled and retention of judges gets increasingly harder.

“By the start of the next legislative session, it will be 12 years since the base pay for judges has been raised,” Eleventh Court of Appeals Chief Justice John Bailey said on behalf of the Council of Chief Justices of the Intermediate Courts of Appeals.

Second to Last

Representatives of the Texas Judicial Branch appeared before the House Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence Committee earlier this month, whose chair, Rep. Jeff Leach said, “Judicial compensation is bordering on emergency status.”

Throughout the testimony and written comments no one mentioned the obvious: The courts are still in this predicament because after the legislature passed a comprehensive compensation bill in 2023 for new, veteran and retired judges, Gov. Greg Abbott vetoed the bill.

During the hearing, Texas Supreme Court Justice Brett Busby took time away on a day when the high court was holding oral arguments to speak as the court’s liaison for the judicial branch.

Busby said Texas ranks 49th among the U.S. states and territories, just behind Guam, when it comes to judges’ pay.

Even that ranking is skewed, Office of Court Administration executive director Megan LaVoie noted, because those statistics come from the National Center for State Courts, which requires an average of all judges.

If Texas used just the base pay, the state would rank dead last, she said.

Since 2013, when the judiciary was last given a bump in base pay, only one other state, Nevada, has not raised salaries, LaVoie said.

By comparison, judges in other large population states have been able to provide compensation to keep up with inflation: 27% in Pennsylvania; 33% in Illinois; 39% in New York; 32% in California; and between 35% and 60% in Florida, depending on the office.

LaVoie said 26% of judges who voluntarily retire said salary was a contributing factor.

Comparing Texas judges to Texas attorneys’ salaries, LaVoie said a experienced attorneys—the upper two-thirds of attorneys—have an average salary of just over $222,000, and the average overall is more than $177,000.

Base pay for a judge, meanwhile, is $140,000.

Susan Brown, the presiding judge of the 11th Administrative Judicial Region, which covers Harris, Galveston, Fort Bend, Brazoria and Matagorda counties, said the low base pay is deterring candidates from seeking office.

“In Galveston County, this year we have one open bench due to a judge retiring. We had one person decide to run for that bench from both sides of the aisle. In Harris and Fort Bend counties, neither party has been able to fill the ballot. So far, in Harris County I have four open benches, three new courts which started yesterday and then one because one of my judges was killed in a car accident,” Brown said.

Brown was referring to Judge Frank Aguilar of the 228th Criminal District Court, who died on Sept. 29 in a single car crash on the highway after leaving a Houston Texans football game.

“There are not enough applicants currently to fill those four benches,” Brown said.

In the 2023 legislative session, the House voted unanimously for a 22.5% raise in base pay and the Senate approved a third tier to help retention of judges with 12 or more years of service. In the end, other state employees got 10% raises and the judicial branch got nothing.

Busby noted that in the 2021 session the legislature added a constitutional amendment raising the bar for the qualifications to be a judge, and in the 2023 session the legislature added new business courts and a fifteenth court of appeals, courts that require judges with specialized levels of experiences that only senior level attorneys can provide.

The committee hearing took place during a politically charged season where the Republican Party is running statewide ads disparaging judges of the opposing party.

Busby noted that security is also a concern because of an increase in threats, adding, “You probably heard about the plot to kill a judge in Williamson County just a few days ago.”

Busby’s remark was a reference to three people arrested after the shooting of two people in a Liberty Hill community residence. The judge was not identified in media reports, but Williamson County Sheriff Mike Gleason said the persons arrested were believed to be connected to a plot to kill a judge in relation to a case involving a child custody dispute.

Busby said the issue of compensation has been delayed for so long that even assistance district attorneys make more today than many judges, and many court reporters make more than the judges they serve.

Busby said the pension system used to provide some help for recruitment and retention, but Senate Bill 1245 in the 2023 session cut the average monthly pension for a new judge by two-thirds from $7,000 to $2,300 a month.

Brown, who also spoke for the Texas Association of Retired, Senior and Former Judges, said the judiciary would also be asking that benefits be made equal to that of an eight-year judge.

“Everyone who retired before September 2019, me included, is capped at the base salary ($140,000). Judges who retired before 2005 were capped at $125,000. Those benefits have not increased since 2005, where inflation has increased 66%,” Brown said.

Harris County 113th District Court Judge Rabeea Collier, commenting as president of the Texas Association of District Judges, stated, “Judicial compensation is not merely a matter of salary; it is a reflection of the value our state places on the fair and efficient administration of justice.”