Nearly a third of the 239 Judicial Department employees to receive layoff notices are judicial marshals, according to department officials, with 26 of them coming from Hartford and New Haven courts.
The department provided a breakdown of its layoffs Monday after finishing a second distribution of pink slips that totaled 113.
Since the start of the layoffs this spring, the department is down 53 marshals — 15 from New Haven and 11 from Hartford — and 22 adult probation officers, five of whom are from Bridgeport. Juvenile probation officers and case flow coordinators also are impacted, losing 15 and 10 positions, respectively, Judicial spokeswoman Rhonda Stearley-Hebert said Monday.
She added that because the layoffs are based on seniority per union contract some court locations are disproportionately affected by the job losses. In response, the department will transfer staff to locations that require additional coverage, she explained, adding that the 239 layoff total does not represent a final number to be let go.
Due to a nearly $1 billion deficit in the state budget that was accounted for in spending cuts last week, “the branch also anticipates closure and consolidation of courthouses,” Stearley-Hebert said. No decisions have been made regarding which courthouses would be closed.
The most recent group of 113 layoffs comes after 126 notices were issued last month, and department officials have said that hundreds more will be required following Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s signoff on the legislature’s budget cuts, which will eliminate about a fifth of the department’s workforce.
Last month, more than a third of the department’s employees who received layoff notices were judicial marshal trainees who hadn’t yet been assigned to a court district.
Forty-eight of the initial 126 layoffs were trainees.
In a letter this month to Malloy and legislative leaders, Chief Court Administrator Patrick Carroll said the reductions will have “unprecedented and catastrophic” consequences, and will impede “every function which we perform, including those that meet both statutory and constitutional responsibilities.”
He said the layoffs would make it “impossible” for the department to take on additional responsibilities that would accompany Malloy’s Second Chance Society proposals, and added that “the reduction is so extreme that a constitutional challenge may be raised.”
