Summary
California's design standards for new and renovated trial courthouses, including assistive listening, interpretation channels, microphones and speech privacy in courtrooms, jury rooms and conference rooms.
Key findings
- Requires an assistive listening system that will "provide secure transmission" of speech and programme audio, with the system types and receiver numbers checked against sections 11B-219 and 11B-706 of the California Building Code.
- For typical courtrooms, specifies a two-channel infrared assistive listening system, channel 1 for assistive listening and channel 2 for language translation, with more channels at the court's discretion. The language access system works with these alternate channels, and a wireless microphone can be routed to the infrared headsets so that an interpreter in the room can interpret directly to listeners.
- Specifies a portable encrypted RF assistive listening system, with a microphone for voice pickup, in jury deliberation rooms, and a portable or fixed encrypted RF system in judicial and executive conference rooms. Jury assembly rooms get a single-channel system, and training rooms an RF or infrared one.
- Specifies gooseneck microphones at the judge's bench, the attorney tables (two on each table, with a mute button and light) and the witness station, optional microphones for the clerk, court reporter and bailiff, and at least two handheld wireless microphones for the jury, litigants and voir dire.
- Asks for pink-noise sound masking in all zones except the bench when the judge calls a sidebar, and an optional boundary microphone at the judge's position to record the sidebar or feed the court reporter's headphones.
- Asks for a courtroom telephone system with echo cancelling on every microphone input, whose output can feed either the ceiling loudspeakers or channel 2 of the assistive listening system when the interpreter is remote, and videoconferencing with echo cancelling on every input in the judicial conference room.
- Asks for speech reinforcement to be designed and commissioned to AVIXA A102.01:2017 on audio coverage uniformity.
- Sections 18.E.5(e), 18.E.8(b) and 18.E.9(c) specify both voice-pickup microphones and multimedia audio inputs for the encrypted RF assistive systems in jury deliberation, judicial conference and executive conference rooms respectively.
Limits
Design standards for California trial courthouses. They give no performance figures for the assistive listening systems themselves and do not mention hearing loops, Bluetooth or Auracast. The Judicial Council's page gives 2023 as the approval date; the PDF's adoption line still carries placeholder text, and its file name suggests a September 2024 file.
Read the original
courts.ca.gov/system/files/file/2023_ctcfs_24_09_19.pdf
Cited in
- What works in courtrooms, council chambers and other meeting rooms where speech must be heard by all and kept in the room?Partly answered
Cite this source
Judicial Council of California, Facilities Services. California Trial Court Facilities Standards, 2023 edition (chapter 18, Audiovisual Systems). Judicial Council of California (courts.ca.gov). 2023. https://courts.ca.gov/system/files/file/2023_ctcfs_24_09_19.pdf (accessed 13 October 2026).
Every finding here cites its source, and who funded each source is labelled. This site does not recommend products. Found an error or a missing study? Suggest a correction.