Texas · Government Code § 61.001
In Texas, juror pay is not a compliance problem.
It is a budget problem.
Texas requires no employer to continue an employee’s wages during jury service. What it requires is that the county pay the juror, at a rate the commissioners court sets each year, out of the county jury fund. That makes juror compensation a forecasting exercise — and one that a single long trial can overturn.
Under Texas Government Code § 61.001, a person who reports for jury service is entitled to reimbursement of not less than $20 for the first day and not less than $58 for each day after. The statute frames these amounts as reimbursement for travel and other expenses rather than as a wage.
The rate itself is a local decision. In preparing and approving the annual county budget, the commissioners court determines the daily amount within the statutory range, paid out of the county jury fund. The court may set different amounts depending on whether a juror serves in a justice court, a county court at law, or a district court, or on any other reasonable criteria.
Texas also protects jurors’ employment. Civil Practice and Remedies Code § 122.001 bars an employer from discharging, threatening, intimidating, or coercing a permanent employee for attending jury service. That is a job-protection statute, not a wage-payment statute. The financial burden of service remains with the juror, and the cost of compensating them remains with the county.
Why It Matters More Than It Looks
One long trial can consume a year of budget.
Juror pay is usually a quiet line item, forecast from last year’s spend and rarely revisited. The difficulty is that the underlying cost is driven by trial length and panel size, neither of which the jury office controls, and both of which are lumpy.
A recent illustration. In 2026, a Travis County judge ordered fourteen jurors compensated at roughly $26,700 each for five days of attendance in a single case. Travis County had budgeted $698,605 for trial jury fees for the fiscal year, against actual spend of $253,700 the prior year. One order consumed more than half the annual budget, leaving the county with enough to cover fewer than ninety trial days heading into the next fiscal year.
That is an outlier, and it turned on the specific facts of the case. But it demonstrates the exposure: a jury fund sized on historical averages has no margin for a single unusual order, and the commissioners court will be the body asked to explain it.
What Actually Drives the Number
Four variables, only one of which is the rate.
Counties tend to model juror pay by multiplying last year’s spend by an inflation factor. The cost is better understood as the product of several things a jury office can measure.
Appearance
How many summoned jurors actually appear
Every juror who reports is owed the first-day amount, whether or not they are seated. A commission that over-summons to protect against a shortfall pays for that insurance in first-day reimbursements, and inconveniences citizens who were never needed. Knowing your appearance rate by court and by time of year is the difference between summoning a safety margin and summoning a guess.
Service days
How many days those jurors serve
The step from $20 to $58 after the first day means cost is concentrated in seated jurors on multi-day trials, not in the large pool that reports and is released. A handful of long trials will move the annual figure far more than a busy month of one-day panels. Forecasting from total summons volume misses this entirely.
Donations
How many jurors donate their pay
Section 61.003 lets a juror donate their reimbursement to designated county programs — child welfare boards, victim assistance, veterans’ funds, and others the commissioners court approves. Donation rates vary widely between counties and are rarely tracked as a distinct measure, yet they directly reduce net jury fund spend. A county that cannot report its donation rate is forecasting without one of its own levers.
Reimbursement
What the state pays back
Counties may request partial reimbursement from the State Comptroller, historically at rates below the county’s own outlay and paid quarterly. That means the net cost to the county and the gross cost of the jury fund are different numbers, and the timing differs too. Both need to be visible when the commissioners court sets next year’s rate.
What a Jury Office Can Do
Bring numbers to the budget conversation.
The commissioners court sets the rate. The jury office is the only body that can tell them what the rate will actually cost, and it is a far stronger position to be in than defending a variance after the fact.
- Report cost by court and by case. Aggregate annual spend hides which courts and which trial lengths drive the number. Cost per trial day is the figure a commissioners court can act on.
- Track donation rate as its own measure. It is a real offset to jury fund spend and one of the few variables a county can influence through how the option is presented.
- Model the rate change before it is adopted. When the commissioners court considers moving the daily amount, the jury office should be able to say what last year would have cost at the proposed rate.
- Reconcile against the treasurer, not just internally. A jury fund that reconciles cleanly to the county’s books each month makes the annual conversation a review rather than an investigation.
- Right-size summons volume. Every avoidable first-day reimbursement is money spent inconveniencing a citizen who was not needed. Yield modeling is a cost control as much as an operational one.
A Note on Systems
If you cannot report it, you cannot forecast it.
Most of what is described above is reporting rather than software: cost per trial day, donation rate, appearance rate by court, net spend against gross. A jury management system that can produce those figures on request turns the annual budget conversation into a straightforward one. A system that cannot leaves the jury office estimating, and estimating is what produces the variance nobody can explain.
For a broader view of why jury administration differs from other court functions, see why jury management is different. Courts in Illinois face a separate change on January 1, 2027 — see what Public Act 104-0683 means for jury commissions.
This is not legal or fiscal advice. Statutory amounts and reimbursement rates change, and county practice varies considerably. Verify the current text of Government Code § 61.001 and § 61.003, and confirm reimbursement terms with the Comptroller, before relying on any figure here for budgeting.
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