Former federal and state judges sent a letter Monday requesting the dismissal of a misconduct complaint filed last month by the U.S. Department of Justice against nearly every federal judge in Minnesota.
Minnesota’s federal judges, including U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz, who was until recently the chief judge for the District of Minnesota, spoke to the New York Times in September about the impact of Operation Metro Surge on the courts. The federal government’s actions during the immigration crackdown — mass arrests of non-criminals, a lack of resources for the courts and local prosecutors, and failure to follow more than 200 court orders — “created a grave threat to the rule of law,” Schiltz said.
The DOJ filed a misconduct complaint with the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which oversees the District of Minnesota, arguing that the judges who spoke to the New York Times violated the code of conduct for federal judges by launching a “partisan press campaign” and criticizing the government. The DOJ requested that U.S. Circuit Judge Steven Colloton order the judges to recuse themselves from all cases involving the Department of Homeland Security.
The complaint was an escalation of an ongoing battle between the Justice Department and the federal courts, especially in Minnesota, where prosecutors are still litigating cases against people who protested Operation Metro Surge.
On Monday, 174 former federal and state judges asked Colloton to dismiss the complaint.
The Minnesota judges’ statements to the New York Times were about the administration of the courts and the rule of law, topics judges are free to speak publicly about, the retired judges wrote. The New York Times article noted that Schiltz declined to comment on any matters pending before him, which would be improper.
“Instead of dealing with the government’s defiance of judicial orders, the government filed disciplinary charges against the Minnesota judges who lawfully called out their misconduct,” said Nancy Gertner, former U.S. district judge for the District of Massachusetts, who signed the letter.
In the letter to Colloton, the retired judges also argued that Colloton does not have the authority to force the recusal of judges from pending cases — there’s a well-established procedure for requesting a judge’s recusal from a case, and a misconduct complaint is not a substitute for that process, the letter states.
Schiltz himself has publicly defended his statements. Two days after the Justice Department filed the complaint against him and others, he spoke at a symposium on state law remedies for federal lawlessness at the St. Thomas School of Law.
“I did not violate any ethics rules,” Schiltz said.
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