>> Funding for this program was provided by friends, the Iowa PBS foundation as well as generations of families and friends who feel passionate about the programs they watch on Iowa PBS.

>> As legislators gathered in Iowa's capital city of Des Moines, judicial issues reverb rate through the economy and society.

The chief justice of the Iowa Supreme Court Susan Christianson addresses challenges and opportunities for the state's judicial system before a joint session of the Iowa general assembly.

Coming up, the 2021 state of the judiciary address.

>> The chair recognizes the sergeant at arms.

>> Mr. President, lieutenant governor Adam Greg has arrived in the house chamber.

>> Please escort lieutenant governor Greg to his seat.

>>.

>> The committee will escort the honorable Kim reynolds to the rostrum.

The chair recognizes the sergeant at arms.

>> Mr. President, your committee to notify and escort chief justice Christianson has arrived.

>> The committee will escort the honorable Susan Christianson, chief justice of the Iowa Supreme Court to the rostrum.

>> It is my pleasure to introduce to you the chief justice of the Iowa Supreme Court, Suzanne Christianson to deliver the state of the judiciary message.

>> Thank you.

Please be seated.

That is a gavel.

Never seen it so up close and personal.

Mr. President, Mr. Speaker -- oh, did I get that wrong?

I did.

You guys changed -- yeah, right.

And members of the general assembly, governor reynolds, who is behind me.

Lieutenant governor GREGG, state officials, colleagues, family and friends, and to all of you Iowans who are watching today and those of you seated before me, thank you so much for this opportunity to address this joint convention of the 89th general assembly of the condition of the judiciary.

I think we all know this is my first time.

I just proved it a minute ago.

To give Iowa's condition of the judiciary.

Let me start by introducing miss to you.

I am Suzi Christianson and I am from Harlem, Iowa, born and raised there.

I married my high school sweetheart, Jay.

He is here with me.

Together, we have five children.

Reese and Nick are able to be here with me today.

Reese's wife, Cara, is part of the family, not here with us today.

Our other children are Adam and his wife Erin, Sadie and her husband, Derrick, and our 18-year-old son, CASS.

Nobody can have an audience like this with a hot Mike and not say the names of your grandchildren out loud.

So for them, here it is.

Logan, Carson, Conner, Emily, jack and Carson.

After high school, I received my legal secretarialdy money invite AIB in Des Moines and then we got married.

I worked for a few years ago a secretary and then I started college.

I went to four colleges in four years and then I moved back home to Harlem and I started commute to go Omaha for Crayton LAUG school for three years.

I am used to people giving me the stink eye for my educational journey.

I'm used to it and I own it.

Maybe it's not the path recommended by guidance counselors or certainly not parents.

And I may not even recommend it for my own children, but at that time in my life, it was the right path for me.

Each and every move that I made, which means every time I changed a school, for the benefit of my family.

That has to be for the right reason.

After high school, I went for 16 years as a prosecutor.

In 2007, I became a district social judge and I practiced family law.

I went to the district court and remained there until 2018 at which time I was appointed to the Iowa Supreme Court.

Thank you, governor reynolds.

Throughout those years when I was a lawyer or when I was a judge, I am so used to seeing people walk into our courthouses all across the state.

And when they walk in, you can see it.

They are full of hope.

They're hoping to not get convicted.

They're hoping to get custody of their child.

They're hoping somebody will listen to their story.

And I enjoyed.

I took comfort in providing comfort to those people.

I liked guiding them through the legal system.

I think they can perhaps see that reassurance in my eyes.

Maybe they can hear it in my voice.

Go upstairs, third floor, I'll meet you by the water fountain.

Or maybe I would say when you testify, be sure to project your voice.

The court reporter has to get down every word.

And most importantly, I would say, I've got your back.

I'll be there with you every step in the courtroom.

This past year, none of those things can happen.

Elevators allow one or two people.

Water fountains have been shut down.

Court reporters will probably smacking if you try to project your voice and they're trying to understand what you're saying behind a mask.

Most importantly, once again, how can a lawyer in hushed conversation give his client the advice that he or she needs?

So exactly what is the state of the judiciary?

What a time for me to give the first one.

I am quite certain that nobody else has given a similar one.

It's been turned on its head for almost a year.

We can't just shut our doors and say see you when things get better.

It's not like people have a choice to come and do business with us.

We tend to do something called subpoena or summons.

We don't have the luxury of sending out an invitation with an RSVP.

So let me share with you how I have responded to previous challenges in my life.

Our oldest son, Nick, was born with cerebral palsy.

And I remember a time in his life when I was wondering what does the future hold, how am I going to do this?

And I came across a super ugly picture with a beautiful saying and it said, we cannot change the wind, but we can adjust our sails.

And it may seem quite simplistic, but it absolutely grabbed my aching heart and it gave me an abrupt and a permanent change in my mind-set.

So if COVID is now the wind of which we cannot change, how can the judicial branch adjust its sails?

Let me tell you what we did.

A small group of individuals got together at the judicial branch building on a snowy day on March 14th, which is a Saturday.

Everything about the day, I still remember the feeling, it felt strange and foreign.

No one knew what we were doing.

But one thing we all agreed upon, in a few short days, maybe even hours, this thing called COVID-19, which none of us had ever heard about, was going to have a stranglehold on the judiciary.

And we knew we had to act.

And we had to act fast.

By the understand of that day, an unimaginable supervisory order had been drafted.

I placed an emergency phone conference with my colleagues.

The full court.

And our decision was swift and unanimous.

And it was fast.

It was the fastest conference we've ever had.

Effective that day, no more jury trials, none.

Anywhere in the state of Iowa.

I soon released a statement to the press and said, access to justice may look a little different right now.

And it may require a bit more patience, but it will not succumb to COVID-19.

I was scared to death.

For the past 305 days, we have carefully monitored the pandemic and tried our best to balance the need of keeping people safe with our commitment, our steadfast commitment to conduct business in our courtrooms.

And I am proud to report today, with confidence, that the judicial branch did not succumb to COVID-19.

But it's not due to that group of people who hung out at the judicial branch building on that snowy day in March.

It's because of the hard work, tenacity and sheer guts of each and every judicial branch employee.

Nobody said I won't do it.

Nobody said I won't do it that way.

If time period permitted, I would utter the name of each of our 1700 employees in the injury additional branch and I would allow them aplow for each name, by the way, just to show them my appreciation for what they have done to help the judicial branch remain open during the most trying of times.

Let me briefly touch on some of the changes we actually made to the judiciary to ensure that eye Iowans will have continued access to justice during a pandemic.

Like almost everyone else in 2020, we went virtual.

Thank goodness our branch had the foresight about 15 years ago to plan and implement an electronic filing system which allows us to be paperless.

And thank goodness for you, our legislature, for making sure that we had adequate funding and maintain that add quantity funding to keep our technological infrastructure.

We had to help our staff quickly learn the different forms of technology and we used a wide range with the help of our department and the technology, judicial proceedings and conferences could be held remotely.

There's maybe been an occasional child talking in the background or somebody having a English with their Internet service.

And everybody knows this.

You're muted.

But this technology allowed us to safely provide Iowans with access to justice.

I sent out an Email, I wanted an idea, how is it going out there?

I miss being in the trenches, I miss the trial court experience out there face-to-face with Iowans every day.

It's a little different at the appellate level.

So I wanted to know how is it going with this virtual stuff?

Are we doing okay?

I wanted to read an Email response because summarizes it would not give it the justice it deeverybody ises.

One of the benefits of the virtual hearing are the pets, dogs, cats, fish, one potbelly pig and an inside goat appearing for a hearing.

Dogs are very interested in court and they want to be heard, barking, whining, crying and they want to be seen sitting on a lap or trying to climb up on a person.

Cats, not so much.

Cats have no interest in court.

In fact, they have a complete disdain for the process.

Usually they're hiding, occasionally they show their contempt by laying on a keyboard or sitting in front of a webcam.

I think we all have those experiences.

We ask the people in our front lines, we have you've night court officers, clerks of courts, judges, court reporters to name a few.

They helped us brainstorm and imagine what kind of guidelines do we need to have in place so when Iowans come into any one of our 100 courthouses to go into one on our many courtrooms, they feel safe.

Upon the recommendation of our newly formed jump start jury trial task force, we began making preparations to begin dipping our toes back into the water.

We started with a few pilot trials.

Although they resumed on September 14th, we had to shut them down about two months later because of an uptick in Iowa's infection rates.

But the lessons we learned during those two months of pilot trials and then some other trials were absolutely immensely helpful when we resumed jury trials in just a couple of weeks on February 1st.

I was honored to have a front row seat, socially distanced, of course, to watch a demonstration of how these Iowa jury trial could safely and effectively and efficiently unfold during a pandemic.

I was blown away with what I saw.

I'd like to tell you some of the things I saw in case anybody is wondering, what is a jury trial going to look like right now.

In Davenport, jury selection was held at this big Convention Center.

The next day, the jury that had been impanelled would meet at the Scott county courthouse to convene in a courtroom there.

In waterLO, the summed jurors were sorted into groups for check-in and they were fold to remain in their cars until the precise time on their notice.

It might have been in five-minute increments.

That was to prevent the flow of people coming.

And in rockwell center, the Calhoun county courthouse was used to pick a jury, have a trial and return a verdict all in one day.

Now, I was pointing out what was different in those counties.

What was the same in all of our courthouses, is all of the courtrooms are COVID ready.

Masks are required for entering the controlled paces.

Seating has been reduced to allow for social distancing and if that couldn't happen, we have used Plexiglass dividers.

What a courtroom looks like is you have the judge, court reporter, lawyers, their clients and a jury.

Some courtrooms have enough room for a little bit of the public to sit socially distanced.

Others don't.

In both of those situations, there's typically another room in the courthouse that has been set up for remote viewing for the public.

Upon the recommendation of our newly formed jump start family law trial task force and in an effort to keep those cases moving, the pandemics had a stifling hold on our docket.

The judicial branch approved new methods to resolve the disputes by implementing informal family law trials and mediation.

In addition to our district courts, we embraced the input and assistance from a distance with the common goal of working for Iowans.

For example, we created individual but similar checklists to make sure that Iowans were faced with consistency when they entered a courthouse, whether it was to do business on the second floor with the treasurer's department or maybe go to the third floor and engage in business with the judicial branch.

There would be consistency in our checks boxes.

Maybe not identical, but very similar.

We also worked closely with the Department of Human Services to protect the health and welfare of our children within the court system.

When a pandemic prevent.speople from having contact, anyway, we had to get creative and make sure that children were safe, but we provided families with an opportunity to interact in a meaningful way.

And in an effort to tap the public's input, we invited Iowans to Email my senior law clerk their COVID-related questions.

We could probably write a book of those.

But those questions, some of them were stuff like how do you recalculate the statute of limitations when you guys have been messing with all the deadlines?

Or some of them were easy and quick to answer like where do I park in I'm in Harrison County or where do I pay my parking ticket?

And then there were those awesome shots in the arm.

One was simply, hang in there.

To maintain transparency and keep the public informed, we established and regularly updated our dedicated web page about what we've done to address the COVID pandemic.

I'd like to briefly tell you about a pilot program that actually was in the works before COVID, but I want to talk about it because it has become extremely relevant during COVID.

It's called the distributive work processing pilot.

If I were to name it, I would call it something like share the work and keep the rural courthouses hopping.

Because that's what it's about.

The timing of that pilot, as I said, was wonderful for a pandemic, but I'm hopeful that it will be successful and continue throughout the state.

Instead of looking at the workload and the staffing of one county and comparing it to another, this pilot looks at the workload and staffing of an entire district.

And then they redistribute it to make sure that the work is flowing evenly.

I'd like to give you an example that I think brings it to life.

In POTAWATAME county, there is more work than there are enough employees to get work done in a timely fashion.

It's difficult.

With this pilot, and through technology, the workload of all the counties in the fourth district are evaluated and redistributed so that staff and anyone of the other eight counties can kick in, chip in and help out that county.

This is radically different than how we've done it until the past.

Historically, Shelby County can only do Shelby County work and so on with every other county.

For one county to be able to assist another county in need within the same district, whether it's during a pandemic or not, this keeps each county relevant.

No matter the size.

And that is a really good thing, says the rural judge.

A dericho raced across the state, crops and houses, businesses, courthouses, neighborhoods, unimaginable damage.

For days and for some people weeks, thousands of Iowans did not have access to electrical, power, or water.

Some people could not even access their courthouses not only in person, but even virtually because their Internet had been shut down through the devastation.

During that time, our employees in the infected areas worked hard to keep course services available for the Iowans who needed it all while dealing with storm destruction in their own personal lives.

I am proud of the resourcefulness of the judges in our staff and I am thankful for the cooperation of local officials that enabled Iowans to access the course services they needed during that dericho.

And then during the summer of 2020, in the midst of developing a plan for resuming court services, yet another national crisis emerged.

As public servants, our task is as simple as it is solemn.

To provide justice without fear, favor or affection.

Our work groups, our commissions, our rules and our task forces, over the past six years, the you DISHLG branch has dedicated itself to implementing initiatives designed to identify and eliminate discriminatory behaviors, behaviors that may compound the disparities present in our system of justice as a whole.

This training is designed to expose people to their unconscious biases and to provide them with tools to adjust automatic patterns of thinking.

The judicial branch remains steadfast in its commitment to becoming better public servants and moving into 2021.

We are strengthening our efforts and start ago two-year pilot that will engage all employees within the judicial branch with a goal of mitigating implicit bias in the areas of race, gender, and other identified protected classes.

As a judicial chief, I was asked, what are your priorities?

That lasted like two weeks before COVID came to town.

Since that snowy day in March, not one person has asked me.

What are your priorities?

DUH.

It's because everyone knows the answer.

It's a dirty word.

COVID.

But when that virus is no longer my priority, which I believe is right around the corner, I have an answer for that question.

Child welfare is profoundly important to me.

You may not know this, but in my prior life I was the cookie judge.

It was my way of connecting to children who were SXIRNSing severe neglect, physical abuse, sexual abuse, mental health issues.

These cherubs stole my heart.

And it became critical for me to help these parents succeed in our judicial system so that they could safely be reunited.

I have two priorities as chief.

FFPSA is a federal funding bill.

And it stands for family first prevention services act.

By you know me.

I would like to rename things and keep it relevant.

I would pick things like bucks to keep it home.

The Supreme Court has a task force called family first.

That is probably a more appropriate title.

Prior to this, federal funding could only be accessed when a federal courtroom could be entered removing a child.

That's wrong.

Money, if removed.

Studies show that in many cases, the long-term trauma experienced by a child who has been removed and placed in an out of home placement such as foster care, perhaps, sometimes that may be worse than any trauma with actually staying in the home.

With family first, many Iowa families in crisis will now receive access to benefits sooner, before a child is removed from the home.

Rather than after the family has been separated.

There are two very important pilot projects that have grown out of the family first task force.

And I could say more about family first, as well.

There's priorities I'm place, family first.

If you can't place with family, then you can place outside the home in a foster home setting and only if it's therapeutic can you place them in group care.

There's so much TOOIT that I would encourage you to look into our annual report which makes reference to it, as well.

Two very important pilot projects grew out of the family first task force.

The state public defender's AUCHS has a pilot project which has been approved by you, our legislature.

This provides funding for a parent to have legal representation before a case gets filed in juvenile court.

Historically, a parent has only been entitled to representation once something gets filed.

The catch there is that's almost many times anecdotally, 80% of the time, that's about the same time an order is entered for removing the child.

Think of the advice an attorney could give a parent, perhaps to take some steps that would prevent the child from being removed and maybe even from getting involved in the system at all.

A second pilot project that came out of the family first task force is called four questions, seven judges.

That's a great name of a pilot project to get a good idea of what it is.

It's the brain child of judge bill Owens and judge Nick YOL.

They asked each other, how can we avoid removing children from their families?

And they came up with four magical questions.

Five more judges across the state judged on board with the other two.

Since that pilot started, even more judges, way more than 7, have adopted the project in their courtrooms.

They obviously now need to change the name of their program.

You can read more information about four questions, seven judges on the annual report, by the way, which was just released today.

In this pilot, over a four-month period of time, those seven judges received a combined 83 requests for removal of children.

Nearly half of them were denied.

That's a good thing.

That means the kids got to stay home.

Out of the 44 requested for removal, which were granted, over half of those children were placed with either biological family or family friends.

Only 15 out of 83 requests went to foster care.

You may not think much of that number, but in my experience, eight years as a juvenile judge, that's impressive, 15 out of 83, that's a good number.

Therefore, my first priority is to ensure that Iowa stands out among all the other states in implementing family first.

My second priority is to elevate the presence of family treatment courts throughout the state of Iowa.

We can't limit a modern system of justice to what you guys are used to seeing on TV, the traditional adversarial.

We can't do that in all settings.

In particular, child abuse and child neglect are best addressed through efforts that actually get to the root causes of the family's crisis.

In Iowa, we have 12 family treatment courts across the state.

The courts get people the help they need to transition out of our court system.

And into healthier, productive lives.

That is win-win.

That's really good for the participant and it's really good for our state.

Estimates show that since 2007, our courts have generated 17.7 million in cost avoidance for the state.

While allowing a majority of the families to remain together while their parents are receiving treatment.

In addition to keeping families intact, these treatment courts have reduced the number of young adults going into our adult prison system and they have diverted juveniles away from the criminal justice system.

The bottom line is, family treatment courts work.

So what does a family treatment court look like?

There's a program called steps.

I helped start that up several years ago.

The steps team is a group of professionals in the areas of substance beauty, mental health, domestic violence, the Department of Human Services, the county attorney and, of course, the child would have representation and there were other professionals around the table, as well.

He ever other week, we would meet in the Cass county courthouse.

Attendance was taken.

Phones were taken.

And each name was randomly called out.

The participants would take turns joining me up front, one at the same time.

And they always knew, they knew the rule, they knew the SCHTICK.

I was going the ask them, how many days of sobriety have you had.

Sometimes it was one, sometimes it was something else.

My second thing, what is one thing you have done to make yourself be the best mom or dad you can be and we would go from there.

I want to end my speech today on the same note as I began.

Hope.

I can't think of a better way to illustrate hope than to tell you the story of Shawn.

I first met Shawn in 2015 when his son entered the child welfare system for the first time.

In 2017, RYLAN became a part of the child welfare system for a second time.

As the judge in Shawn's case, I could not let RYLAN be with his dad as far as in his care because Shawn continued to test positive for methamphetamine and he refused to shine a safety plan.

Seven months later, Shawn agreed to try the steps program and I say try with a bit of Winniness in my choice because that was his attitude.

I confronted him about yet another positive meth test.

And his response when I called him to it, my body makes meth.

I know me.

I'm a mom, too.

I probably said something like, you know, I may have been born at night.

I was not born last night.

We went back and forth, back and forth.

I'm not going to lose this argument.

And we went back and forth and finally I said to him, you know, there's nothing I can do for you here in steps if you won't be honest with us.

We will accept you being dirty you can admit that, but we will not accept you're being honest with us and you're lying about it.

Soon after Shawn started S.T.E.P.s, he got a job as a machinist.

I think it's remarkable that during his interview he said I'm a meth user and I'm trying to get my kid back and he was hired.

That's something.

During that time, Shawn could not safely provide for his son so he was placed in family foster care.

He was in the home of John and Naomi.

They have a special bond that continues today and that is because of their willingness to say yes to become ago foster parent in the state of Iowa.

Shawn's mom was an important part of his life through all this.

She helped out with RYLAN when she could.

She gave Shawn a place to live when I was trying to get sober and she was Shawn's taxi for all of his many appointments, getting to work, court hearings, steps.

Shawn had a lot of OWIs and unpaid fines that prevented him from getting a license.

Slowly but surely, meeting every other Wednesday, Shawn was consistently testing negative on his drug tests.

He was actively involved in his local church and he was committed to his job.

On one particular day in S.T.E.P.S., I asked him my typical question.

Show, Shawn, tell me, since the last time you've been here, what is the best thing you've done for RYLAN so be the best dad you can be?

He shot out of his chair, held up his wallet and screamed for the first time in ten years, I have a valid driver's license.

And I tell you what, that courtroom erupted with hoots and hollers.

People in family treatment court and oftentimes criminal court system, having a driver's license is not the norm.

At least in family treatment court, it is the exception, not the rule to have a driver's license.

This made an impact not just on Shawn, I could see it in every other participant.

Wow.

He got his license back.

In January of '19, soon after I transitioned from the district court to the Supreme Court, Shawn graduated from the S.T.E.P.S.

program.

I learned from the grapevine that RYLAN's case was successfully closed out and he remains in his dad's care today.

For the past two years, I've often thought about Shawn.

Just because a case is closed out doesn't mean everything is great.

I was hoping he maintained sobriety, hoping RYLAN was safe.

So what's been going on since that time?

Shawn and I recently reconnected.

It was such an eye-opening experience for me to speak with him.

And Shawn candidly spoke with me about his meth addiction, more candidly than he did during S.T.E.P.S.

Shawn continues to work as a machinist in Atlantic.

And the company where he worked joined a big international company and he was soon rehired where he remains today.

After reconnecting with Shawn, I asked him my two famous questions, so, Shawn, now that we're talking again, I have to ask you, how many days of sobriety do you have under your belt?

And today, the answer is 1,031.

And my second question, even though that's a good answer, I of course have to ask my second question.

And what have you done since the last time I've seen you to be the best dad you can be.

His answer was the same, 1,031.

That's about three years, by the way.

Shawn is here today with his son, RYLAN, his parents, Harvey and Judy and two friends, Brandon and DIRK.

Why don't you wave.

There they are.

That was even more applause, I think, than getting his license.

Cool, Shawn.

By the way, it is RYLAN's birthday today.

And everybody knows, I told you I'm the cookie judge is that is what inspired me to make cookies is RYLAN's birthdays.

I could stop my story right here and it would be a great story about hope.

But there's a little bit more I wanted to tell you about Shawn.

Two months ago, Shawn went to work like every other day.

Everyone was told to meet up because Bob the boss is coming to work.

Shawn thought, oh, we're going to get a turkey out of this deal.

It was about Thanksgiving time.

He heard Bob starting to talk, everyone was getting together and Bob started talking about some award called the spirit of caring award.

And Bob started to talk about the recipient who was chosen out of 3,500 global employees.

He said the recipient was from GRISWALD.

Shawn's ears perked up.

As Bob provided more personal details about the mystery recipient, it dawned on Shawn, that's me.

So I would like to read TOI what was said during this announcement of his award.

By Bob.

This year's recipient is receiving this award based on the following attributes, constant positive attitude, development of personal relationships with those around him, extremely dependable and flexible.

Shawn was awarded $2,500 to give to a charity of his choice and he was given a crystal spirit of caring award, which he told me he calls his Grammy.

Shawn shared with me that in the thick of his addiction, he truly wanted to be clean.

He hoped for a better life.

And through his participation in S.T.E.P.S., family treatment court, he was living that better life.

Thank you, Shawn, for letting me share your story of hope and how Iowa's judiciary helped provide a path for you to achieve your outstanding, outstanding accomplishments.

It's stories like Shawn's that continue to give me hope for the work of our you dish branch by adapting to the unprecedented circumstances that we faced this year.

We have proven hope cannot be canceled, hope cannot be kept at six feet distance.

We will continue to provide Iowans with the access to justice they need to turn their hopes into reality.

In closing, I want to thank my colleagues for their commitment to our work and to you, the legislature, for your support of our work and to give me this opportunity to speak with you today.

On behalf of the people that we serve.

I look forward to making sure that all Iowans who enter any of our courtrooms in any of our 100 courthouses receive the access to justice, no matter what is going in our world.

Thank you.

>> Will the committee to escort the chief justice please come forward and escort chief justice Christianson from the house chamber.

>> Funding for this program was provided by friends, the Iowa PBS foundation as well as generations of families and friends who feel passionate about the programs they watch on