The Judicial Council of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit has dismissed a misconduct complaint that the U.S. Justice Department lodged against Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg of the District of Columbia.
The complaint was publicly announced in July by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi and alleged that Boasberg made improper remarks about the Trump administration during a meeting of the Judicial Conference, the policy-making body for the federal judiciary. Bondi's announcement followed Boasberg's public suggestion that he might consider disciplinary steps against Justice Department attorneys connected to litigation brought by Venezuelan nationals challenging their removal to a prison in El Salvador.
In a newly released order dated December 19, Chief U.S. Circuit Judge Jeffrey Sutton wrote that the Justice Department had not established that Boasberg actually made the statements attributed to him. Sutton further concluded that, even if the remarks had been made during the closed-door Judicial Conference meeting, they would not run afoul of the judicial ethics rules.
Boasberg, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, declined to comment on the matter. The Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment.
Background and context
Boasberg drew scrutiny earlier in the year after he criticized the administration's handling of an effort to deport several Venezuelan nationals. In April, he said the government appeared to have acted "in bad faith" when it rushed to assemble three deportation flights on March 15 while he was conducting emergency court proceedings examining the legality of the removals. The Venezuelans were removed from the United States under the Alien Enemies Act.
Days after Boasberg's remarks about the deportation flights, Bondi announced the Justice Department's judicial misconduct complaint. The complaint focused on comments reported by the conservative outlet The Federalist, which attributed remarks to Boasberg made during a March meeting of the Judicial Conference that Chief U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts attended.
The Justice Department's filing alleged that Boasberg had expressed to Roberts and other attendees his concern that the administration might ignore judicial rulings and provoke "a constitutional crisis." The department argued those remarks could violate the Codes of Judicial Conduct and that Boasberg had improperly allowed his beliefs about the litigation to influence his actions in the Venezuelan case.
Transfer and dismissal
Because potential conflicts among judges in the District of Columbia presented an issue, Chief Justice John Roberts transferred the complaint to the Judicial Council of the 6th Circuit, based in Cincinnati.
Sutton's order found both procedural and substantive limits to the complaint. He said the Justice Department had not proved Boasberg had made the quoted statements. More broadly, Sutton wrote that judges' expressions of concern in the closed-door setting of the Judicial Conference - including anxieties about executive-branch compliance with judicial orders - are not so far outside the usual range of topics for those meetings as to constitute violations of the Codes of Judicial Conduct. "In these settings, a judge's expression of anxiety about executive-branch compliance with judicial orders, whether rightly feared or not, is not so far afield from customary topics at these meetings - judicial independence, judicial security, and inter-branch relations - as to violate the Codes of Judicial Conduct," he wrote.
The dismissal means the council will not pursue disciplinary action based on the Justice Department's allegations as presented in the transferred complaint.
Implications
The council's decision resolves the specific procedural dispute over whether the alleged comments, if they were uttered, constituted an ethical breach subject to discipline. It leaves unresolved, in public record, the Justice Department's earlier contention that Boasberg's April observations about the March deportation flights suggested the administration may have acted improperly in assembling those flights while litigation was pending.