Courts in the Wild: Magistrate Judges in U.S. National Parks
Vol. 109 No. 2 (2025) | Communicating to the People | Download PDF Version of Article
As any lawyer in the federal courts knows, magistrate judges fulfill many critical roles.1 One unique and lesser known of those roles is the work of magistrate judges in our national parks.
In the United States, the federal judiciary has a full-time magistrate judge in two national parks: Yellowstone in Wyoming and Yosemite in California. At a third national park, Grand Canyon in Arizona, a magistrate judge regularly conducts proceedings, among her other duties, based out of nearby Flagstaff, Ariz. In each of these three parks, there is a dedicated federal courthouse. And for the first time, all three of the assigned magistrate judges currently serving in each of the parks are women.
Like the courthouses and parks in which they serve, each of these magistrate judges — Helena M. Barch-Kuchta of Yosemite, Camille D. Bibles of Grand Canyon, and Stephanie A. Hambrick of Yellowstone — offers distinct perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences.
As the only judicial officer assigned to her respective park, each is extremely busy, particularly during the summer. During my interviews with them, several themes emerged, including a shared passion for the outdoors and stewardship of natural resources, as well as resilience and dedication to the position, despite working in remote outposts and facing challenging conditions.
Justice Among Yosemite’s Granite Walls
Helena Barch-Kuchta speaks at Law Day in Sentinel Meadow, Yosemite National Park.
Helena M. Barch-Kuchta hails from rural western Pennsylvania. As a child, she was active in the Camp Fire Girls and would spend her summers camping in the nearby mountains. Following her graduation from Penn State University, Barch-Kuchta traveled crosscountry with a friend, camping at national parks (including Yosemite and Yellowstone) along the way.
Following law school at Duquesne University School of Law in Pittsburgh, Barch-Kuchta was a litigator in the private, public, and international sectors. She began her career with K&L Gates LLP in Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C. After her husband’s work relocated her and her family to Florida, she served as a staff attorney for the Middle District of Florida. In that capacity, she assisted the court in managing a variety of cases, including prisoner civil rights and habeas corpus (including death penalty) matters. After her first decade of public service, she joined the U.S. Department of Justice as a trial attorney in its Civil Division, Office of Foreign Litigation, European Office, located in the United Kingdom, where she represented the United States in affirmative and defensive litigation matters throughout Europe and Turkey.
As an adult, Barch-Kuchta continued to camp and hike. While living abroad, she frequently vacationed with her family in national parks in Europe and Africa. Her efforts to instill a love for the outdoors in her children have borne fruit — having seen her mom serve as a Girl Scout leader, Barch-Kuchta’s daughter was inspired to pursue a career with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection, and her son is an Eagle Scout.
After returning stateside from London, Barch-Kuchta decided to seek a position that would, as she put it, “enable me to combine my 20-plus years of diverse legal experience, passion for the law, commitment to the U.S. Constitution, and my love of the outdoors. The posting for Yosemite magistrate judge answered my call!” In November 2020, she was appointed the U.S. magistrate judge for the Yosemite Division of the Eastern District of California.
Camille Bibles presides in her Grand Canyon courtroom.
Holding Court in the Grand Canyon and Beyond
Camille D. Bibles’ earliest memory is of being in a backpack on her father’s shoulders while he fly-fished near her family’s Wyoming home. After studying biology and philosophy as an undergraduate, she worked as an outdoor instructor based in Virginia, where she taught backpacking, rock climbing, water sports, caving, and adventure courses, primarily in national parks and other public lands in and around the state.
Bibles attended law school at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va., and her legal career has spanned civil, criminal, and international litigation. Her first legal job was as a deputy attorney in Coconino County in northern Arizona. She began as a civil attorney and later transitioned into a criminal prosecutor, specializing in biological evidence and violent crimes. She is not a native Arizonan, but the vast landscapes and diverse cultures of the state quickly became “home” to her.
After many years as a deputy county attorney, Bibles became a special assistant U.S. attorney practicing before Arizona’s Flagstaff magistrate judge. After accepting a position as an assistant U.S. attorney (AUSA) and moving to Phoenix, Bibles practiced in the federal courts in both Flagstaff and Phoenix. In that position, she prosecuted predominantly violent offenses in northern Arizona. Twice during her time as an AUSA, she took a leave of absence to prosecute war criminals in the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), including Slobodan Milosevic. When she returned home after her last ICTY trial, she was selected to serve as the U.S. magistrate judge in northern Arizona.
She was drawn to the position and a return to northern Arizona due to “the spectacular landscapes, the diverse communities, [and] the unique cultures.” Her interest in a judicial career was further reinforced by her work at the ICTY, which, in her own words, “underscored the importance of protecting one’s community. Preserving the rule of law is critical to safeguarding our communities and resources.” She assumed her seat in February 2019.
Bibles is an avid outdoorswoman who has hiked and backpacked in Grand Canyon National Park hundreds of times. She has also spent countless hours exploring our national parks and public lands across the western United States. She gets out into the national parks as often as the constraints of her busy judicial position allow, and she is known to organize challenging hikes for her fellow Arizona federal judges. She still loves to go fly-fishing, a pastime that harkens back to her childhood roots with her father.
Stephanie Hambrick joins National Park Service Rangers at a Naturalization Ceremony in Yellowstone.
Life and Law in Yellowstone
Raised in a ranching family in Casper, Stephanie A. Hambrick is a proud Wyoming native. Although she grew up on the opposite side of the state from Yellowstone and Grand Teton, she visited both parks as a child and developed a love for them.
After earning her undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Wyoming, Hambrick embarked on her legal career. She served as a prosecutor with the district attorney’s office in Casper before joining the U.S. Attorney’s Office, also in Casper. She eventually became the AUSA for Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. As the AUSA assigned to those parks, Hambrick was responsible for prosecuting criminal offenses occurring within the parks’ boundaries.
“It was a fantastic and one-of-a-kind opportunity to live and work in these beautiful places,” she said. “After two years, the magistrate judge announced he was retiring, and I felt I was in a unique position with my experience to be able to fulfill the role of judge as well as my dream of becoming a member of the judiciary. The stars had aligned in a way I never would have foreseen.”
And so, in April 2022, Hambrick took the bench as U.S. magistrate judge for the District of Wyoming, seated in Yellowstone. She continues to visit national parks whenever the opportunity arises, enjoying hiking, snowshoeing, and cross-country skiing along the way.
The Duties of a National Park Judge
Like all magistrate judges, Hambrick, Bibles, and Barch-Kuchta handle both criminal and civil matters year-round. However, their specific duties vary somewhat. In addition, all three judges devote time to civics outreach on behalf of the federal courts.
First, in criminal law, each judge serves the obvious purpose of supporting the National Park Service’s responsibility to protect and conserve the national parks’ “scenery, natural and historic objects, and wildlife in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations.”2 A primary task of these judges is, as Barch-Kuchta notes, to balance the Park Service’s mandate with an “individual’s desire to enjoy and recreate in” our national parks.
In peak tourist season, the dockets of Hambrick and Barch-Kuchta are busy with misdemeanor cases. In Yellowstone, visitors who walk off boardwalks into thermal areas face prosecution — one such case was United States v. Pierce Brosnan, also known as James Bond. In another case, a Boy Scout leader was cited for cooking chicken in thermal waters. Other unusual cases include an intoxicated visitor who tried to kick a bison and treasure hunters who dug into a military cemetery.
Bibles’ docket differs somewhat from her colleagues because she is based in Flagstaff and not assigned solely to Grand Canyon. Her caseload includes serious felony hearings — such as murder and assault on tribal lands — as well as a wide range of regulatory offenses. She is also “always on duty,” available 24/7 to respond to warrants.
Like many of their colleagues around the country, Judges Hambrick, Bibles, and Barch-Kuchta all devote time to civics outreach. Each regularly holds naturalization ceremonies in the natural beauty of their parks.
Barch-Kuchta also hosts local students, providing an “educational exercise and understanding of the court’s purpose in their backyard.” And no discussion of civics in our national parks would be complete without mentioning the marquee event “Law Day Yosemite.” The event, which is proudly supported by the Federal Bar Association’s San Joaquin Valley Chapter and held every year on the first Friday of May, gathers more than 300 students, community members, teachers, judges, and dignitaries for a half-day, immersive exploration of the Law Day theme among Yosemite’s towering granite walls. The program, which has been in operation since 2012, exemplifies the collaboration between our federal courts and national parks in preserving our national resources and upholding the rule of law.
Beautiful, Yet Challenging, Places to Work
Under 28 U.S.C. § 636(b)(3), any magistrate judge appointed to serve in a national park must reside “within the exterior boundaries of that park, or at some place reasonably adjacent thereto.” This statute applies to both Hambrick and Barch-Kuchta.
For both judges, living and working in a national park present tremendous benefits and challenges. Barch-Kuchta vividly described: “Living inside Yosemite National Park is akin to living inside a four-season watercolor painting. Spring brings gushing waterfalls, . . . summer . . . lets me escape the crowds and kayak on Tenaya Lake, fall brings the rock climbers, [and] winter . . . provides cross-country and downhill skiing [and] snowshoeing[,] and ushers in . . . a resounding stillness under snow-flocked granite cliffs and trees.”
The vistas of Yosemite and Yellowstone, though, come with a remote setting — and a remote setting can present challenges. Both judges must rent their housing from the National Park Service. Barch-Kuchta resides in a wood cabin built 90 years ago and recalled one winter so severe that Yosemite was closed for three weeks, with her being “snowed in and sleeping at the courthouse.” Hambrick remarked that the “temperature in the winter can be absolutely brutal.”
Bibles, though not required to live in Grand Canyon, must traverse long stretches of rugged terrain to sit in remote locations. Her favorite courtroom is located at the South Rim, renovated by the National Park Service to its early 20th-century ambiance and adorned with images of the Canyon, the Colorado River, and wildlife — photographs added, she explained, “to ensure awareness of the Canyon’s heartbeat.”
Despite the challenges, all three judges expressed a combined passion for the law and the outdoors, making them intrepid, steadfast, and dedicated jurists in their parks.
ALISON S. BACHUS serves as a U.S. magistrate judge in Phoenix. She is a proud member of the Bolch Judicial Institute’s 2027 LLM in Judicial Studies class.
1 This excerpt is reprinted with permission and has been lightly edited from Alison S. Bachus, Working in a Watercolor Painting Come to Life: Magistrate Judges in Our National Parks, The Federal Lawyer, Winter 2025, at 64. The author thanks the Federal Bar Association for originally inspiring her to write this article. Having hiked, rafted, and explored the national parks featured here, it has been a joy for her to meet these amazing jurists and learn about what they do on a daily basis. She expresses her heartfelt appreciation and admiration for the service of Judges Bibles, Hambrick, and Barch-Kuchta. © 2024 Alison S. Bachus. All rights reserved.
2 54 U.S.C. § 100101(a).