Judge Illegally Fired Whistleblower Who Called Him Out For Preaching Religion From The Bench

[cbayer]

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/02/17/3623469/judge-illegally-fired-whistleblower-called-preaching-religion-bench/

BY IAN MILLHISER POSTED ON FEBRUARY 17, 2015 AT 10:34 AM UPDATED: FEBRUARY 18, 2015 AT 9:02 AM


CREDIT: SHUTTERSTOCK

Judge Mark Somers, a state trial judge in Dearborn, Michigan, sent official correspondence to a potential juror on letterhead containing a Biblical passage, according to a former court employee. The clerk of the court complained that Somers was “literally preaching from the bench” at times. The court’s deputy administrator, a woman named Julie Pucci, complained to an agency that oversees the state’s judiciary about the Biblical letterhead. Some time later, after Somers was promoted to chief judge of the court, he fired Pucci.

Based on these facts, a federal jury awarded Pucci over $730,000 in compensatory and punitive damages. The federal trial court that heard this case determined, among other things, that Somers violated Pucci’s First Amendment rights when he fired her in retaliation for complaining about his conduct on the bench.

On Friday, a federal appeals court upheld this decision. As the appeals court explained, Pucci “had a strong interest—as a citizen—in alerting the [state agency] to Somers’s conduct on the bench, which ‘implicates the propriety and legality of public, in-court judicial conduct.” This interest trumped any interest Somers may have had in removing a court employee that he had tense relations with.

more at link

[TreasonousBastard]

1. But he's still a judge, right? After he...

cost the state, or county, 3/4 of a million and was smacked down-- he's chief judge and still preaching from a bigger bench.

[cbayer]

2. His constituency apparently likes him and doesn't care what it costs them.

He's a district court judge and has kept the same position. You might be thinking of the chief justice from Alabama.

FWIW, he had serious support from the Arab-American community. Not sure what that was all about.