The Senate Judiciary Committee, which has been aggressively processing President Trump’s nominations to the federal bench, will follow precedent set during Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial and delay considering nominations until Trump’s trial has concluded.

Courthouse News Service reports that Senator Kamala Harris, a California Democrat and former presidential candidate, on Wednesday called on Senate Republicans to hold up their judicial confirmation pipeline during Trump’s impeachment trial.

Sen. Mazie Hirono, a Hawaii Democrat and Judiciary committee member, had earlier criticized a decision to hold a meeting after the articles of impeachment were walked over to the Senate on Wednesday, saying it didn’t align with precedent, according to Bloomberg Law.

Read the Courthouse News article.

An embattled federal district court seat in North Carolina that multiple presidents struggled to fill over the course of 14 years finally has a new occupant, reports Bloomberg Law.

By a 68 to 21 vote, the U.S. Senate confirmed law professor Richard E. Myers to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina, eliminating the longest-running vacancy in the federal judiciary and bolstering President Donald Trump’s efforts to reshape the courts with conservatives, according to Bloomberg’s Madison Alder.

“Myers, who Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham said would be the first black judge on his court, is a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law and is a former federal prosecutor,” writes Alder.

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

Three Indiana judges were found to have engaged in judicial misconduct and in “an injudicious manner” that included fisticuffs and gunfire in a restaurant’s parking lot in downtown Indianapolis, CNN reports.

The incident led to the judges’ being temporarily suspended without pay by the Indiana Supreme Court.

It all started hours before the three were to attend an educational conference in Indianapolis. They went out drinking for a few hours and decided to walk to a strip joint but found it to be closed, so they went to a White Castle. In the parking lot there, they became involved in a fracas with two men.

Two of the judges were shot and required emergency surgeries.

The three are Andrew Adams of the Clark Circuit Court 1, Bradley B. Jacobs of the Clark Circuit Court 2 and Sabrina R. Bell of the Crawford Circuit Court.

Read the CNN article.

The Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday approved and sent to the full Senate for consideration the nomination of Sarah Pitlyk — rated unqualified by the American Bar Association — to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, reports Blomberg Law.

Three other federal district court nominees also advanced, but action on two controversial appeals court picks was again deferred.

The ABA’s Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary in September rated Pitlyk as not qualified for the lifetime appointment, saying she lacks the requisite courtroom experience to serve as a trial judge.

“The disagreement boiled over Oct. 30 when the committee clashed over the role of the ABA Standing Committee after it issued a harsh assessment of Lawrence VanDyke, who also received an unqualified rating for a seat on the U.S. Appeals Court for the Ninth Circuit,” writes Bloomberg’s Madison Alder.

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

The Houston Chronicle reports that an appeals court justice serving Southeast Texas continues to sit on the bench as she suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, all while facing familial discord over the control of her $8 million estate, court records show.

The Chronicle‘s Samantha Ketterer explains:

“Her sons launched an effort this month to become her legal guardians, alleging that Justice Laura Carter Higley, 72, is continuing with her daily routine in a manner contrary to the path of her failing cognitive health. That includes driving herself to work downtown and serving in her capacity on the First Court of Appeals based in Houston, said sons Garrett C. Higley and Robert Carter Higley.”

Documents filed in probate court indicate that she received an official diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease in October.

Read the Houston Chronicle article.

Bloomberg Law reports that the Senate Judiciary Committee delayed action on a number of President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees Oct. 17, including circuit court picks who faced pushback at their confirmation hearings.

“White House lawyer Steven Menashi and U.S. District Judge Halil Suleyman Ozerden likely will have to wait at least a week for the committee to again consider their nominations to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second and Fifth Circuits, respectively,” writes Bloomberg’s Madison Alder.

Two district court nominees, Justin Walker in Kentucky and Sarah Pitlyk in Missouri, have been rated not qualified by the American Bar Association. The panel approved Walker’s selection, but held over Pitlyk’s.

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

Bloomberg Law reports that the 10th Circuit Judicial Council publicly reprimanded District Court Judge Carlos Murguia for sexual harassment, the judiciary’s most severe available sanction.

The council found that the judge — appointed by Bill Clinton to the court in Kansas — “gave preferential treatment and unwanted attention to female employees of the Judiciary in the form of sexually suggestive comments, inappropriate text messages, and excessive, non-work-related contact, much of which occurred after work hours and often late at night.”

Murguia apologized for his conduct, but the council found his apologies “more tied to his regret that his actions were brought to light than an awareness of, and regret for, the harm he caused ….”

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

Senators from both parties criticized a nominee for a federal appeals court for declining to answer questions Wednesday about his work in the Trump White House and Education Department, according to an Associated Press report.

Trump has nominated Steven Menashi, an associate White House counsel, to a seat on the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Senators from both parties at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing complained as Menashi refused to answer questions about his work on immigration issues, including a policy to separate migrant children from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border.

“This isn’t supposed to be a game,” Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., told Menashi.

Read the AP report.

Politico is reporting that Sen. Ted Cruz will oppose President Donald Trump’s nominee for the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, Halil Suleyman “Sul” Ozerden, a major setback for the embattled nomination.

The report says conservative opposition places in doubt the future of Ozerden, who is a close friend of acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, and whose nomination Mulvaney pushed over the objections of the White House Counsel’s office.

“Unlike most other Trump judicial nominees, Ozerden lacks explicit backing from conservative judicial groups like the Judicial Crisis Network,” Politico reports. “Carrie Severino, the group’s chief counsel, wrote last year that ‘we could do better than Judge Ozerden’ in Mississippi.”

Read the Politico article.

The Arizona Capitol Times is reporting that an applicant for the Arizona Court of Appeals plagiarized multiple memorable passages from confirmation hearings for two U.S. Supreme Court justices.

Kristina Reeves, an attorney in private practice and former assistant attorney general, is one of 11 applicants hoping to fill a vacancy on the Court of Appeals, reports the Capitol Times‘ Dillon Rosenblatt.

The alleged plagiarism involved copied-and-pasted passages from speeches by U.S. Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito, including multiple passages of Gorsuch’s confirmation speech to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2017, altering it minimally to suit her gender, according to Rosenblatt.

Read the Capitol Times article.

Intemperate statements in court and — in one case — allegations of unwanted sexual advances have led to difficult times for three judges, two in Illinois and one in Florida.

The Chicago Tribune reports that a state board that oversees judges said in a complaint that Judge Mauricio Araujo of Cook County made unwanted sexual advances toward a court reporter, made inappropriate sexual comments about a prosecutor and tried to kiss a police officer — a pattern of harassing behavior toward women. The board asked the Illinois Courts Commission to take “appropriate” action against Araujo.

WBEZ Chicago has a report about an associate judge in Cook County who was denied reappointment to the bench in a vote by the county’s circuit judges. Richard Schwind, an  associate judge since 2012, had been criticized for racially insensitive comments. He was disciplined last year after WBEZ reported that he told a black defendant, “You were never a slave.”

And in Florida, the state supreme court publicly reprimanded Broward County Circuit Judge Dennis Daniel Bailey for conduct during a criminal trial last year, according to the Miami Herald. Bailey ordered a courtroom deputy to remove a defense attorney during a sidebar conference, in the presence of the jury.

Lawyers at Pond Lehocky Stern Giordano had a beef with a Philadelphia workers compensation judge who ruled against them, so they told a member of the governor’s staff that the judge was romantically involved with a local workers’ comp lawyer.

Three months later, Judge Andrea McCormick was out of a job, reports The Inquirer of Philadelphia.

“State investigators say they responded to Pond Lehocky’s complaint by pulling eight years of McCormick emails and determined that she had violated multiple policies: using her work computer to make online purchases and exchange personal photos, and sharing court decisions before they were officially posted online, among other alleged offenses,” writes the Inquirer‘s William Bender.

“We never asked for anyone to be terminated,” Pond Lehocky partner David Stern said in an email.

Read the Inquirer article.

Former West Virginia Supreme Court justice Allen Loughry, author of a book chronicling political corruption, was sentenced Wednesday to 24 months in federal prison on 10 federal charges including mail fraud and wire fraud, reports the Charleston Gazette-Mail.

Loughry also was placed on three years supervisory release, fined $10,000 and ordered to pay $1,273 in restitution, according to the Gazette-Mail‘s Phil Kabler.

The charges against Loughry, who resigned from the court last October, included misuse of state vehicles and credit cards for personal travel; lying to federal investigators about that travel, as well as about having a state-owned antique desk in his home; and defrauding a legal institute by accepting a travel reimbursement when he had used a state vehicle for the trip.

Read the Gazette-Mail article.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh

CNN reports that a U.S. judicial council on Tuesday dismissed 83 complaints that had been lodged against new Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, arising largely from statements he made during his contentious September confirmation hearings.

“In a 10-page order, the judicial council of a Denver-based US appeals court said the complaints — the first of which were referred to the court by Chief Justice John Roberts on October 10 — could not be acted on because Kavanaugh, as a justice, is no longer covered by the judiciary’s misconduct rules,” explains CNN’s Joan Biskupic.

“The allegations contained in the complaints are serious,” the order noted, “but the Judicial Council is obligated to adhere to the Act. Lacking statutory authority to do anything more, the complaints must be dismissed because an intervening event — Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court — has made the complaints no longer appropriate for consideration under the Act.”

Read the CNN article.

NBC News is reporting that a controversial judicial nominee is in danger of being derailed in the U.S. Senate because of objections over his past work defending state laws viewed as discriminatory and senate leadership’s refusal to vote on legislation aimed at protecting special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

NBC reporters Leigh Ann Caldwell and Frank Thorp V explain: “Thomas Farr, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be a U.S. District Court judge for the Eastern District of North Carolina, has come under fire because of his work on cases that Democrats say have disenfranchised African Americans from voting. That issue has at least one GOP senator, Tim Scott of South Carolina, undecided on whether to support Farr’s confirmation.”

And Republican Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona is blocking all judicial nominees, including Farr’s, until GOP leaders agree to hold a vote on a bill to put up guardrails against any threat of Trump firing special counsel Robert Mueller.

Read the NBC News article.

The Oregon Supreme Court on Thursday took the unusual step of suspending a sitting state court judge — Vance Day of Salem — for three years, reports The Oregonian.

The court found that the Marion County Circuit Court committed “willful misconduct” and made “willful misstatements” to investigators to cover up the truth, according to reporter Aimee Green.

The court also found that Day acted with prejudice against same-sex couples by deciding he wouldn’t marry them and he instructed his staff to employ a scheme to avoid “public detection” of his plan, the Supreme Court said.

Read The Oregonian article.

A juvenile and domestic relations judge in southwest Virginia was removed from the bench by the Virginia Supreme Court after he admitted contacting two key witnesses in a pending federal corruption case against his wife, according to The Washington Post.

“Pomrenke also has been found guilty of contempt of court by a federal judge in Bristol in connection with his wife’s case and on Thursday was sentenced to two months in prison and ordered to pay the maximum allowable fine of $1,000,” writes the Post‘s Tom Jackman.

His wife, Stacey Pomrenkeis serving a 34-month prison sentence on multiple charges of conspiracy, extortion and wire fraud from her time as chief financial officer of Bristol Virginia Utilities.

Read the Post’s article.