Illinois Supreme Court Accused of Double Standard in Judge’s Removal Over Pro-Trump Comments
A conservative traffic court judge continues his fight against the Illinois Supreme Court. He argues there is a double standard, as an outspoken liberal judge is allowed to remain on the bench while commenting on current political topics.
The Illinois Supreme Court is being accused of a double standard in its treatment of a retired traffic court judge who made comments supporting President Trump.
Judge James Brown is currently fighting his removal from the Cook County court system after a campaign by left-wing legal groups to cancel him. Brown, while retired and as a private citizen, made comments supporting Trump and criticizing illegal immigration, as Legal Insurrection reported earlier this month. He also criticized transgenderism and former Cook County prosecutor Kim Foxx.
Those comments landed him in hot water and led to his quick removal from traffic court, a position he took after answering a call for retired judges to come back to work to clear a backlog of cases.
His legal team at the Liberty Justice Center recently filed a motion to oppose the dismissal of the case, arguing that the state supreme court has engaged in “viewpoint discrimination.”
In the April 17 filing, the attorneys point out that an appellate judge, Ramon Ocasio, regularly writes about liberal political views for the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin. Ocasio identifies himself as a judge and encourages readers to reach him at his official government email address.
“Defendants claim Judge Brown undermined public confidence in the judiciary,” attorneys wrote in the latest filing.
“Yet Defendants allow other sitting judges to publicly speak on matters of public concern,” the attorneys argued, before summarizing some of Ocasio’s various comments.
“His columns discuss myriad matters of public concern, including: the ‘abolition of policing’ through the lens of the Native American ‘indigenous resistance’ who view police officers as ‘foot soldiers of US occupation, racism, and misogyny,” the filing stated.
Ocasio also wrote about the “’pervasive influence of white supremacy’ evidenced in our ‘legal frameworks, societal norms, and economic systems,'” and “the teaching of critical race theory in public schools.”
Supreme Court precedents about government employees’ speech also protect Brown’s rights to share his views, the filing stated.
There is no clear “disruption” from Brown’s views, which again were all expressed as a private citizen while he was no longer on the bench.
The Liberty Justice Center pointed to an unblemished record during the brief six-week period in which Brown returned to active judicial duty.
His attorneys argued:
Judge Brown’s speech did not disrupt the Cook County Circuit Court or the Illinois Judiciary writ large. Certainly, no actual disruption occurred. Judge Brown filled an otherwise vacant “high volume courtroom,” presiding over 1,000 cases in Cook County Traffic Court and 40 felony preliminary hearings over just six weeks without complaint.
To show potential disruption, Defendants rely on speculation and conjecture that Judge Brown’s speech somehow creates a pervasive distrust of him and the Illinois judiciary.
The judge is asking to be restored to the bench for the remainder of his term, which would end in December of this year.
He would also like “a declaration that his constitutional rights were violated” and damages, stemming from the “lost pension value and expenses borne out of returning to the bench only to be wrongfully removed forty-two days later.”
[Featured image courtesy of Liberty Justice Center]
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Comments
One standard for sh*tlibs, another for everybody else.
If it weren’t for double standards, the Left would have no standards at all.
Leftists: Democracy dies without hypocrisy!
But that’s [D]ifferent.
I wish the judge well in his efforts, but let’s be realistic. We live in a nation where the Communist Party openly advocates assassinations of opposition leaders, mass arrests and executions of “racists”. Trying to get the Communists running Illinois to voluntarily limit their power to dominate is not going to happen.
That’s why the judge’s lawsuit is necessary. And, he will win, on the merits and facts, as stated, because the double standard being applied is so brazen and glaring.
Ill is abbreviated that way for a reason
The judge is correct. He will also lose. My guess is that 90 percent (+/-) of high ranking government employees—and that ABSOLUTELY includes judges—are effectively Democrats. Some may be registered GOP, but it is performative.
not a matter of if
but when
Illinois “Highest Court” seems to be their “Lowest Sewer”. Just look at their state’s governor, Porky Pritzker; or for that matter the mayor of their largest city “Let’s Go Brandon” Johnson (those jokes write themselves!). Amongst all of this seditious behavior, can anyone be surprised that their rubber-stamp, Roland Freisler Supreme Court judges do stuff like this?
Yup, that “three independent branches” theory is humming like clockwork.
“ Don’t terrorize. Organize. Don’t burn. Give kids a chance to learn . . . The real answer to race problems in this country is education. Not burning and killing. Be ready. Be qualified. Own something. Be somebody. That’s Black Power.”
– the other James Brown
Wonder if the ISC would push him down, too.
except education is taught by the racist lefty government and their instructions are explicit…..whty be evil
Bottom line is that somehow a motivated political minority has managed to infiltrate government, academia and most of our media, and is busily working to consolidate and expand their power and control by any means necessary. Their goal is to cancel the opposition, so that they can deconstruct our democracy and impose their radical agendas unimpeded by the will of the majority. They expect their propaganda will convert or drive away enough of the pockets of resistance to consolidate their power forever, and if we let them do that then we will deserve the hell that results.