Suit seeks Alaska Judicial Council records on judge screening

A conservative legal group asked an Anchorage court on Wednesday to force the Alaska Judicial Council to hand over scoring sheets, evaluation forms and interview assessments used to rank candidates for every judgeship in the state since 2020.

The America First Legal Foundation filed the four-page complaint on September 2 in Superior Court for the Third Judicial District at Anchorage, signed by attorney Alexandra N. Dunn. It asks the court to declare the records disclosable, order a search and order production by a date certain.

The council screens applicants for every judicial vacancy in Alaska and tells voters every two years whether to keep the judges they have. Its findings are on the ballot again this November, when 21 judges statewide stand for retention. The council recommended a yes vote for 18 of them, a no vote for two Kenai Peninsula judges, Martin Fallon and Kelly J. Lawson, and made no recommendation for Marianna Carpeneti of the Juneau Superior Court. The council publishes its vote counts: on Carpeneti three voted no, two yes and two abstained, which is why there is no recommendation rather than a negative one.

The foundation emailed a six-part request to council Executive Director Susanne DiPietro on the morning of June 5. Four and a half hours later she replied in full: "Receipt confirmed. S. DiPietro." The complaint states nothing further arrived in the nearly three months before filing.

The request covers January 1, 2020 forward, seeking materials on the racial and gender composition of the bench and applicant pool, scoring rubrics and completed evaluation forms, any demographic goals for nominee lists, and communications with the governor's office about nominee characteristics.

The legal claim is narrower than the request. The complaint says the council blew a ten-day response deadline set in a Department of Administration regulation, which state law assigns to executive branch agencies. The council is a judicial branch body, and a separate statutory subsection puts judicial branch records procedures with the administrative director of the Alaska Court System. The foundation's own request cites that subsection to argue the council lacked authority to write its own rules. Whether such procedures exist, and what deadline they set, the complaint does not address. Alaska law lets a requester go straight to superior court without first appealing to the agency, so the suit follows silence rather than a denial.

The complaint says the council's bylaws "explicitly mandate" that it make "every effort to promote diversity, including gender and ethnic diversity" when evaluating recommendations. The published bylaws place that phrase in a different sentence, about encouraging qualified bar members to seek nomination. The nomination criteria are listed separately and run from professional competence and integrity to demonstrated commitment to public and community service and to equal justice and the legal needs of Alaska's diverse communities. A separate bylaw bars council members from discriminating on any legally prohibited basis. The request objects to the last two criteria as resembling cultural competence standards, which assess cultural sensitivity, that federal guidance has warned can serve as proxies for race.

The bylaws exempt from disclosure solicited comments and survey responses about applicants and judges, sensitive personal application material, personnel records and deliberative material, the last protected only if disclosure's harm outweighs the need for access. Mixed records must be redacted and the rest released.

Foundation Senior Counsel Emily Percival said the council "should produce the requested documents and prove that judicial selection in Alaska is fair, honest, and meritocratic."

The council has filed no answer and has said nothing publicly about the request. Its Report to the Community about Judges on the November Ballot is dated Sept. 4. Its next scheduled meeting falls the week of November 2, after the election.