On Thursday, April 30, 2026, the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) announced that it will undertake Phase III of its review to identify potential implicit bias vulnerabilities within the Judicial Tenure Commission, with the possibility of recommending evidence-based best practices to strengthen safeguards in Michigan’s judicial disciplinary system.
The NCSC’s comprehensive analysis will focus on racial disparities in how Requests for Investigation (RFIs) are filed, processed, and resolved against Black judges compared to their White counterparts. This phase aims to provide actionable insights into how judicial conduct commission policies and practices may contribute to or mitigate inequitable outcomes.
Task One will investigate the disproportionality of total RFIs filed against Black judges. The NCSC will analyze RFIs to determine whether filing patterns differ by judge race, examining jurisdictional, court, and RFI-level factors. Factors to be considered include whether the jurisdiction is rural or urban, racial composition, court type and workload, judge’s race and sex, number of prior grievances, nature of grievance, class of grievant, and nature of litigation.
Task Two will address the disproportionality of “full investigations” due to transcripts included in RFIs. The goal is to identify patterns in RFI filings without an attached transcript and factors associated with disproportionate progression to “full investigation” for Black judges in transcript-only cases. This task will assess filing trends in RFIs to determine which factors play a role in racial differences in filings without a transcript attached, looking at the same jurisdictional, court, RFI, and judge-level factors detailed in Task 1.
Task Three will focus on differences in the severity of outcomes by allegation severity. This task will involve hand-coding original RFIs for all cases that proceeded to full investigation, capturing the Brown Factors appearing in the allegation and alleged Judicial Canon violations, as well as any mitigating and aggravating factors. Outcomes will then be compared by race to examine what, if any, relationship exists between allegation severity, Michigan JTC findings, and the severity of outcomes for cases reaching full investigation.
Task Four will identify potential for implicit bias. This task will focus on how organizational practices may play a role in creating conditions that either exacerbate or limit the influence of implicit biases on decision-making within the Michigan JTC. It will also identify aspects of the Michigan JTC policies and procedures that present opportunities for implicit bias to influence decision-making, and, if found, detail best practices for guarding against its effects.
The findings from each of the four tasks will be presented in the final Phase III report, with the findings from Phase II reiterated in clear, accessible language and serving as a segue to the Phase III results. The report will highlight whether there are areas where Michigan JTC policies and procedures could be strengthened to guard against implicit bias and will situate these recommendations within the current evidence-based literature on implicit bias.
