{"id":41011,"date":"2026-04-13T11:41:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T17:41:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=41011"},"modified":"2026-04-16T14:42:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T20:42:17","slug":"judiciary-omnibus-bill-approved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=41011","title":{"rendered":"Judiciary omnibus bill approved"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Lawmakers gave final approval April 10 to an omnibus judicial bill combining updates to sentencing, court fees and rural legal access.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_37408\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-37408\" style=\"width: 200px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"37408\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?attachment_id=37408\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/SenBosn_inline.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"200,300\" data-comments-opened=\"0\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;9&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;Office of University Communicati&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;Canon EOS R5&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;Senator Carolyn Bosn, is a member of the Nebraska Legislature from Lincoln, Nebraska, in District 25.  April 18, 2023. Photo by Craig Chandler \/ University Communication.&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;1681824079&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;\\u00a9 2023, The Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska. All rights reserved.&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;125&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;160&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0.00625&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;1&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"SenBosn_inline\" data-image-description=\"&lt;p&gt;Sen. Carolyn Bosn&lt;\/p&gt;\n\" data-image-caption=\"&lt;p&gt;Sen. Carolyn Bosn&lt;\/p&gt;\n\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/SenBosn_inline.jpg\" class=\"size-full wp-image-37408\" src=\"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/SenBosn_inline.jpg\" alt=\"Sen. Caroyln Bosn\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-37408\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sen. Carolyn Bosn<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Under LB935, introduced by Lincoln Sen. Carolyn Bosn, a political subdivision may recover attorney fees and court costs if it must defend against a claim that a court finds frivolous or primarily intended to harass the subdivision or its public officials.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The bill also modifies sentencing rules by preserving the presumption of probation for Class IV felonies, unless a defendant originally was charged with a more serious felony and pled down to a Class IV offense.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">LB935 includes provisions of the following seven bills:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">LB789, introduced by Bosn, which prevents defendants from benefiting if they intentionally make a witness unavailable, allowing a witness\u2019s prior statements to be admitted in court;<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">LB876, sponsored by Sen. Bob Hallstrom of Syracuse, which establishes a statewide 72-hour no-contact period, to take effect automatically when a person is arrested for certain domestic or sexual assault offenses;<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">LB978, introduced by Whitman Sen. Tanya Storer, which allows individuals depicted in or exposed to obscene material, child sexual abuse material or content promoting child sexual exploitation to sue entities that intentionally distribute such content on publicly available websites;<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">LB1020, sponsored by Sen. Eliot Bostar of Lincoln, which criminalizes unauthorized use of tracking devices, establishes penalties for swatting incidents and restricts drone use in designated airspace without proper approval;<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">LB1139, introduced by Hallstrom, which modifies how child and spousal support liens are applied by limiting them to periods of missed payments and requiring their automatic removal once obligations are satisfied;<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">LB1199, sponsored by Sumner Sen. Teresa Ibach, which provides additional funding for the state\u2019s rural attorney loan repayment program, increases the county population threshold from 15,000 to 75,000 to qualify as a designated legal profession shortage area and creates a tiered priority system for future awards; and<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">LB1228, introduced by Bellevue Sen. Rick Holdcroft at the request of Gov. Jim Pillen, which establishes a new docket fee for civil cases and traffic misdemeanors and infractions in district and county courts, creates a $10 case management system software fee and directs most of the new revenue to the state General Fund.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">LB935 passed on a 38-11 vote and takes effect immediately.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lawmakers gave final approval April 10 to an omnibus judicial bill combining updates to sentencing, court fees and rural legal access.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36722,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13],"tags":[316],"class_list":["post-41011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-judiciary","tag-sen-caroyln-bosn"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/UpdateBlogPhoto-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41011"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41050,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41011\/revisions\/41050"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}