Minnesota court interpreters threaten work stoppage, calling for higher pay

Minnesota's certified court interpreters are threatening to stop work Monday over claims that the judiciary has been underpaying them for years.

The interpreters sent a letter to State Court Administrator Jeff Shorba saying that a new compensation policy that takes effect Monday is "entirely unacceptable" and that the judiciary has neglected its interpreter program after many requests for better pay.

Interpreters were paid $50 per hour in 1997, and after decades of stalled pay a new policy raises their rate from $56 to $65 – a raise interpreters say still drastically fails to keep up with inflation. To have the same purchasing power they did 25 years ago, interpreters had asked the courts to raise their pay to $95 per hour.

As more foreign-born people move to Minnesota, state courts have seen a surging need for interpreters: 46,622 court hearings required a foreign language interpreter in 2022, a 77% increase since 2012. The court said it has 85 active, certified interpreters, most of them Spanish-speaking, followed by Russian and Hmong speakers.

The judiciary is required to provide interpreters under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and advocates of better compensation for interpreters say that equal access to justice is at risk as skilled people leave the courts for better opportunities. Interpreters work as independent contractors with no benefits and take extensive tests to earn certification. They can usually only manage to bill 20 hours a week — they are rarely called to work full days in court, and often must drive to courthouses to work just a few hours at a time. Some travel to faraway counties.

Court spokesman Kyle Christopherson said in an email that the court administration was informed about the possible work stoppage on Tuesday. "Because we value the essential work our court interpreters do in delivering justice, we would like to engage with them before speaking to the media," he added.

Interpreters are not part of a union but have organized their campaign for higher wages. They have already started to reject assignments from the court starting Monday, emailing a response to administrators that they cannot provide services in light of the new policy but "will happily accept future assignments once the Minnesota Judicial Branch revises the policy and comes to mutually agreeable terms."

Interpreters, who mostly declined to speak on the record for fear of being blackballed from receiving court work, said in interviews that low pay is driving people from the profession and many skilled interpreters are pursuing private sector work that often pays $100 to $150 an hour and covers travel time and mileage. Federal courts pay far more: certified court interpreters in that system make $320 for a half day of work.

Finding local interpreters at lower rates is also a problem in the immigration courts, which operate in a separate system than the federal judiciary. At the immigration court in Fort Snelling, interpreters fly in from Atlanta, Phoenix, Los Angeles and other cities across the country even for common languages such as Spanish.

The Minnesota judiciary's new policy cuts a provision that compensated interpreters for travel time when their one-way distance exceeded 35 miles. The new policy only compensates them for mileage.

Interpreters and their supporters in the legal system are particularly concerned, however, that the new policy removes a clause that the court had to make a "diligent effort" to hire a certified interpreter. Non-certified interpreters on the roster, who don't undergo the same level of testing, have always been paid less and would earn $55 under the new policy.

Certified Spanish interpreter Pablo Bagnasco emailed the court last June during the public comment period saying that the court's proposed changes go against the mandate to provide qualified interpreters to people with limited English proficiency.

"This seems like a shortcut and an easy way out to circumvent the requirement of finding the most qualified interpreters ... in turn putting the most marginalized members of our society at an even greater disadvantage instead of equal footing as intended in the interpreter's code of ethics," he wrote.

A series of private attorneys wrote in support of the interpreters. And dozens of public defenders and their staffs also signed a letter backing the interpreters' requests in 2023, writing that they rely on interpreters who assist in representing their clients and that it is "imperative to the integrity of the court proceedings that we have the best trained and certified court interpreters available."