§ 14A.061.Review and Recommendation by Magistrates

The referral provision, worded identically to the inmate chapter’s and serving a smaller docket.

The provision is the inmate chapter’s word for word: a system adopted by supreme court rule under which a court may send a suit under this chapter to a magistrate, who reviews it and reports back.

Mandatory as to the system, permissive as to its use. The rule must exist; referral is the court’s choice.

The work being moved is screening rather than deciding. Checking a disclosure affidavit against court records, verifying grievance dates, reading a trust account statement, and forming a view on frivolousness.

The magistrate reviews and recommends; the referring court decides. That limit keeps the dismissal power with the judge, which matters for orders that can bar future filings.

The population here is far smaller than the inmate chapter’s — a few hundred people rather than well over a hundred thousand — so the volume this addresses is correspondingly modest.

Its value is expertise rather than throughput. The chapter interlocks with the civil commitment statute, the office’s grievance policies and the vexatious litigant chapter, and a magistrate who handles these repeatedly will know how they fit.

Funding may come from money appropriated to the supreme court or received through interagency contract, the second allowing the office to contribute to reviewing filings its programme generates.

Subsection (c) was repealed in 2025, alongside the identical repeal in the inmate chapter.