{"id":311331,"date":"2025-10-17T18:04:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T18:04:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/311331\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T18:04:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T18:04:12","slug":"fort-worth-considers-hiring-municipal-judge-to-fill-a-vacancy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/311331\/","title":{"rendered":"Fort Worth considers hiring municipal judge to fill a vacancy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Fort Worth City Council members are considering naming a judge to fill a vacancy on the city\u2019s municipal court and a second \u201csubstitute\u201d judge.<\/p>\n<p>The City Council at its Oct. 21 meeting will consider naming:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Joseph Henderson, now a Fort Worth pro tem or \u201csubstitute\u201d judge, as a permanent judge.<\/li>\n<li>Stewart Milner of Arlington as a pro tem judge, filling Henderson\u2019s job.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Their terms would run until March 31, 2027.<\/p>\n<p>The council\u2019s Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs Committee, which comprises several council members, <a href=\"https:\/\/fortworthgov.granicus.com\/player\/clip\/5981\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>considered the posts<\/strong><\/a><strong> <\/strong>at its Oct. 14 meeting.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fortworthtexas.gov\/departments\/municipal-court\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Fort Worth Municipal Court <\/strong><\/a>has nine funded judge positions. The vacancy occurred when Judge Robert N. McDonald retired on March 28.<\/p>\n<p>Chief Judge Simon C. Gonzalez told the committee that the vacancy, combined with one current and one upcoming leave of absence, made it necessary to fill the permanent position \u201cas soon as possible.\u201d Gonzalez first brought the concern to the committee\u2019s attention at its September meeting.<\/p>\n<p>One judge is on leave under the federal <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dol.gov\/agencies\/whd\/fmla\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>Family and Medical Leave Act<\/strong><\/a>, and another judge will begin leave in late October under FMLA.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s a need to \u201cfill this (permanent) position as soon as possible,\u201d Gonzalez told the council committee.<\/p>\n<p>An interview panel selected Henderson, who has served as a pro tem or \u201csubstitute\u201d Fort Worth municipal judge for eight years, as permanent judge and requested the council approve the appointment for a term through March 31, 2027.<\/p>\n<p>The panel also selected Stewart Milner, who retired in April after 28 years as the chief judge of Arlington Municipal Court, to be a Fort Worth substitute judge through March 31, 2027.<\/p>\n<p>Henderson would make $127,899.20 annually as a full-time judge. The substitute judge would make $60 per hour.<\/p>\n<p>Lou Chapman is a member of the Fort Worth Report\u2019s Documenters crew. Scott Nishimura provided reporting for this story.<\/p>\n<p>If you believe anything in these notes is inaccurate, please email us at news@fortworthreport.org with \u201cCorrection Request\u201d in the subject line.<\/p>\n<p>\n\tRelated\n<\/p>\n<p>Fort Worth Report is <a href=\"https:\/\/fortworthreport.org\/2024\/08\/25\/fort-worth-report-achieves-global-trust-certification-heres-what-it-means-for-our-community\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative<\/a> for adhering to standards for ethical journalism.<\/p>\n<p>Republish This Story<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"license\" rel=\"noreferrer license nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"88\" height=\"31\" alt=\"Creative Commons License\" style=\"border-width:0\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/1758084579_646_cc-by-nd-4.0.png\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Republishing is free for noncommercial entities. Commercial entities are prohibited without a licensing agreement. Contact us for details. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fort Worth City Council members are considering naming a judge to fill a vacancy on the city\u2019s municipal&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":311332,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5138],"tags":[5229,356,14614,7371,14615,14616,7372,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-311331","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-worth","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-courts","10":"tag-documenters","11":"tag-fort-worth","12":"tag-fort-worth-documenters","13":"tag-fort-worth-report-documenters","14":"tag-fortworth","15":"tag-texas","16":"tag-tx","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-united-states-of-america","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","21":"tag-us","22":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115390832904864001","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}