Non-Negotiable: California Moves to Cap What Courts Pay Contract Interpreters
The Judicial Council of California’s Court Executives Advisory Committee has proposed rewriting the Payment Policies for Independent Contractor Interpreters, the rules that govern what a superior court pays a freelance interpreter it books for a proceeding. The public comment period closed on August 24, 2026, the proposed effective date is January 1, 2027, and the council’s next business meeting is October 15 and 16.
If adopted, the daily rate a court may pay a contract interpreter becomes fixed at the federal level, non-negotiable, and an interpreter who declines that rate is treated as unavailable. For attorneys who rely on court-supplied interpreters in hearings, trials, or settlement conferences, the proposal matters because it changes who the court is likely to send, particularly in the languages California already struggles to staff.
The Proposal
The proposal, numbered SP26-05, raises the standard daily rate for certified and registered interpreters to the federal level, then removes the section of the current policy that allowed a court to pay above that rate in extraordinary circumstances.
Under the current policy, a court can negotiate with an interpreter in a scarce language who asks for more than the standard rate. Under the proposal, that flexibility disappears. An interpreter who asks for more than the capped rate is treated as unavailable, as if no qualified interpreter existed at all, and the court moves to the next step: appointing a provisional, noncertified interpreter.
The proposal also standardizes other terms. All courts would use one uniform Independent Contractor Interpreter Agreement. Travel would be reimbursed only under the council’s standard guidelines. Courts could no longer pay a premium based on the type of proceeding, for an interpreter who handles two language pairs in a single day, or for one who moves between courthouse locations in the same day. A court executive officer would no longer have authority to approve a cancellation fee above the policy’s set limits.
Why the Council Is Doing This
The annual Budget Act instructs the council to set rates for court interpreters that do not exceed what the federal courts pay. Costs have been running above that ceiling. The council’s expenditure report for fiscal year 2024-25 found that contract interpreter spending rose 19 percent in one year while spending on court-employed interpreters stayed flat, and that contract interpreters now account for nearly four in ten interpreter dollars statewide. In several regions, the average payment for Mixteco, Farsi, and Korean interpreters sat well above the ceiling now proposed.
The council has also reported that the program’s reserves are expected to be exhausted in the current fiscal year.
For most interpreters, this proposal is a pay increase. The standard rate has not moved since 2021, and the proposal raises it meaningfully for certified, registered, and noncertified interpreters alike. The interpreters who fare worse under the proposal are the ones in scarce languages who had been successfully negotiating above the federal rate, and the courts that had been paying those higher rates to keep them available.
The Interpreters’ Objection
The Association of Independent Judicial Interpreters of California filed its opposition on the last day of the comment period. The core argument is straightforward: a statewide rate cap prevents courts from competing against each other for interpreters, but it does nothing to prevent law firms, private agencies, or federal courts from offering more. Certified interpreters in scarce languages will not stop working. They will simply stop prioritizing state court assignments. As the association put it, if courts collectively offer a rate that credentialed interpreters decline, those courts would be on equal footing with each other, but standing together without an interpreter.
The letter also raises a separate legal argument: that a non-negotiable rate is difficult to reconcile with the classification of interpreters as independent contractors. Labor Code section 2776 lists the ability to set one’s own rates as one of the defining characteristics of a business-to-business relationship. If the court dictates the rate on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, the association argues, the classification becomes harder to defend.
What the Proposal Does to the Courtroom
When a certified or registered interpreter is not available after a diligent search, California Rules of Court, rule 2.893 allows a court to appoint a noncertified interpreter who has been provisionally qualified by a judicial officer. A separate and narrower path, the temporary appointment, is the one limited to a single, brief, routine matter, and it requires the party to waive a certified or provisionally qualified interpreter. The judge must find good cause on the record, identify the interpreter by name, state that they are not certified or registered, make a finding that they are qualified, and confirm that the oath was administered.
Under the current policy, an interpreter who asks for more than the standard rate is someone the court can still retain by approving higher pay in extraordinary circumstances. Under the proposal, that same interpreter is unavailable by definition. The court certifies the unavailability, turns to rule 2.893, and appoints a provisional interpreter, one who has not passed the state’s certification exam.
It is worth noting how this compares to other court professionals. When a public defender is unavailable, the case is delayed, not reassigned to someone without a law license. When a court reporter is unavailable, the proceeding waits or, in a limited set of case types, is electronically recorded. Interpreters occupy a different category: California law explicitly permits a provisional, uncredentialed substitute when a certified interpreter cannot be secured. The proposal, by removing the court’s ability to negotiate above the cap, expands the conditions under which that substitution becomes the only available option.
Criminal and Civil Cases Are Not the Same
A person charged with a crime who cannot understand English has a right to an interpreter throughout the proceedings under article I, section 14 of the California Constitution, and Government Code section 68561 requires that, absent good cause, the interpreter in a court proceeding in a language the Judicial Council has designated be a certified court interpreter. A provisional appointment is a fallback permitted when no certified interpreter is available, not a substitute of equal standing.
Civil cases work differently. Under Evidence Code section 756, courts are reimbursed for interpreter costs in civil matters only to the extent required by other state or federal laws, and when funds fall short, each court follows a priority order set by the Judicial Council, with protective-order and elder abuse matters first. In lower-priority civil matters, a tighter interpreter budget does not only mean a less credentialed interpreter. It can mean no interpreter at all, regardless of the litigant’s need.
For civil attorneys, a proposal that shrinks the pool of certified interpreters willing to take state court assignments at the capped rate is a proposal that moves their clients further down the priority list when the court has to choose who gets coverage.
What Counsel Can Do
Ask at calendaring who will interpret. For a scarce language, ask the clerk whether a certified or registered interpreter has been confirmed or whether the court expects a provisional appointment. That answer tells you whether to raise the issue before the hearing rather than during it.
Know what the record has to show. If a noncertified interpreter is appointed, the findings listed above belong on the record. A missing finding is worth an objection at the time. A present one is the moment to ask what the interpreter’s qualification covers, including the specific dialect, since a provisional qualification is language-specific and a language is not the same as a dialect.
Book your own interpreter for depositions and client meetings. The rate cap governs what courts pay and does not reach private proceedings. The interpreters the courts may lose to the private market are the same certified interpreters law firms compete for. In the scarce languages, the strongest credentialed interpreters book up first. For a deposition in one of those languages, confirm the interpreter when the date is set, not the week before.
The council has a budget problem and the proposal is a defensible answer to it. The cost lands somewhere else: on the record, on the litigant, and on the attorney responsible for both. A certified interpreter holds a credential the state issued after rigorous examination. A provisional interpreter is in the room because no credentialed interpreter would take the date at the offered rate. For counsel who arrange their own coverage, the response is the same one that applies every time: know which interpreter is coming, know what the credential covers, and for anything you control, book the credentialed one early.
Kaplan Interpreting Services staffs court-certified interpreters for depositions, hearings, and client meetings across California and nationwide, matched by language, dialect, and setting.
Not legal advice. Standards vary by jurisdiction. The proposal remains subject to Judicial Council action.
CEO & Founder
Born in Dallas, Texas, Alexandra grew up surrounded by Spanish, English, Arabic, and Italian. After moving to Venezuela, Spanish became her primary language. She holds a Master's in Healthcare Administration from Washington University in St. Louis and is a California court certified and medical interpreter.
She founded Kaplan Interpreting Services after seeing an industry that treated interpreters as interchangeable and clients as ticket numbers. She built a protocol-driven operation where every interpreter is hand-selected and credentialed for the specific setting, every client has a dedicated point of contact, and risk management is built into every assignment.
Her career reached a historic milestone when she interpreted the conversation between President-elect Biden and Pope Francis. That assignment, along with engagements for Nike and the Summit of the Americas, set the standard for every client engagement that followed.
"The same protocols that protected that historic conversation now protect every assignment we handle."