The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court established and charged the Judicial Circuit Assessment Committee with evaluating whether there is a need to consolidate (i.e., reduce the number of) Florida’s judicial circuits. Pursuant to its charges, the Committee must assume in making its findings and recommendations that district court of appeal (DCA) boundaries will remain unchanged. To this end, your responses to questions about consolidation of judicial circuits should assume that the current DCA boundaries will stay the same. In other words, consolidation may not occur across DCA boundaries.

As specified in Florida Rule of General Practice and Judicial Administration 2.241, the Committee will consider six criteria (effectiveness, efficiency, access to courts, professionalism, public trust and confidence, and additional criteria considered when determining the need for additional judges). The purpose of this survey is to obtain input pertaining to these six criteria.

If you would like to provide input for multiple judicial circuits, please complete a separate survey for each circuit. Please do not complete more than one survey per judicial circuit. Statistical information for judicial circuits is available for reference in the materials packet for the July 14, 2023, meeting of the Committee on the webpage for the Committee.

This survey contains a minimum of 36 questions and a maximum of 55 questions due to subpart questions that sometimes appear when a particular answer is provided. The survey is estimated to require approximately 20 minutes to complete. Please note that you can save your survey and return later to finish and submit the survey.

Survey responses are considered public records that must be disclosed upon request. However, your responses will be compiled and analyzed anonymously, as a whole or by demographic group.

All survey responses must be submitted by the close of business on Friday, September 1, 2023.

Link to the survey here.