It’s a routine step when someone files a lawsuit in federal court in Manhattan: The case is randomly assigned to a judge.
But what happened recently in a case brought by New York City teachers and other education workers seeking to prevent coronavirus vaccine claims is anything but routine. .
For more than two weeks, teachers’ attorneys asked three consecutive judges appointed in the case to reuse themselves and have reassigned it. The lawyers, citing financial disclosure forms, list each judge owns thousands of dollars in stock in the Covid-19 vaccine maker, whose share price, they argued, could be subsidized. helped or hurt by their rulings.
The attorneys wrote June 9 to Judge Valerie E. Caproni, the first judge appointed to the case, “Ownership in this stock constitutes a direct financial conflict of interest.
Judge Caproni reused himself and the case was randomly assigned to the second judge, Edgardo Ramos. After the plaintiffs allege that he also had stakes in vaccine manufacturers, he withdrew and the case was turned over to the third judge, Naomi Reice Buchwald.
Sujata Gibson, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, said: “I’m encouraged to see that they take it seriously and act quickly.
But Judge Buchwald, who the plaintiffs said also owns shares, refused to step aside, arguing that the claim was based on “outdated information.” The plaintiffs responded with a petition asking her to certify that she did not own the stock.
The escalating dispute highlights a question that is attracting increasing scrutiny in the media, the courts and Congress: When should judges remove themselves from cases?
Last year, a Wall Street Journal investigation found that at least 130 federal judges were found to have violated judicial law and ethics by presiding over cases involving companies they or their families are involved in. share ownership.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., citing the articles, called for tighter controls, ethics training, and compliance with the rules and President Biden recently signed a law strengthening privacy requirements revealed.
Several ethics experts who have reviewed the dispute in the teacher’s case say the repeated denials show how attorneys may find it advantageous to ask the disqualified judge if the that serves a strategic purpose.
In their initial claim against Judge Caproni, the plaintiffs’ attorneys noted that she denied several primary motives. “The proceedings to date may have resulted in a perception of a lack of neutrality,” they wrote.
By law, judges must give up ownership if they own even one stock in a petitioner, said Stephen Gillers, a professor at New York University School of Law. “The partial rule is very easy,” he said. “It is a bright line. It exists or does not exist, and there is no question. “
However, in the case of teachers, the parties are public servants and the city’s education department – not the company. The question, then, is whether a judge’s financial interests “could be significantly affected” by a ruling, which is ambiguous.
In all cases, experts say, judges must disqualify themselves in any proceedings where “their fairness could be reasonably questioned”.
But as David Luban, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, put it, “This standard—“fairness can reasonably be set”—leads a lot of room.
In his view, the successive movements in the teacher’s case were unusual but not frivolous and did not cross moral boundaries.
“It’s very strategic, but litigation is strategic,” Mr. Luban said.
Years ago, Manhattan federal court heard cases using a wooden wheel, the kind that could be spun to call out numbers in church bingo. Inside the wheel were sealed envelopes bearing the names of the judges.
Now, courts use a software program to assign civil cases, but the principle remains the same: randomization.
“The idea of justice is blind, that you’re meeting with a judge you can’t choose, and who doesn’t choose their case but has to decide who is assigned to them instead,” said Amanda Frost, a professor of law at American University in Washington, DC
The teacher’s case involves two civil rights lawsuits filed last year that challenge the requirement that about 150,000 city education workers – employed in the nation’s largest school district – be vaccinated. apply for Covid-19 to keep their jobs.
Until last month Plaintiffs’ attorneys wrote to Judge Caproni, who initially oversaw the case, saying that new disclosure forms available for 2020 show she owns between $50,000 and $100,000 in Pfizer stock. Other filings, they said, show she has held a substantial amount of stock in the company since at least 2011.
Judge Caproni, in a brief order, replied that she never considered the case a case that “substantially affects any financial interest of a long-term investor in Pfizer.” She noted that in October last year, 95% of the education department’s total staff had been vaccinated, leaving only about 7,000 unvaccinated and “who will be affected by future rulings”.
She said she doubts that the incident, including whether the vaccine authorization stands or falls, will affect Pfizer’s stockpiles “in any meaningful way.”
However, she said she would repurpose herself “to avoid the appearance of any biases or biases that may arise.” She also rejected the argument that her previous rulings reflected “bias or favoritism” and that they “did not affect” her decision, she wrote.
The second judge asked to stay aside, Judge Ramos, withdrew after the plaintiffs filed a petition showing his stake in the makers of the Covid vaccine.
In seeking the denial of Judge Buchwald, third judge, attorneys said her 2020 disclosure forms show assets held in Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson. Judge Buchwald, denied the request, stating that she did not own such stock on the date the case was handed over to her.
Ms Gibson, the plaintiff’s attorney, said the denial requests were made in good faith, “especially in a case as important as this, where thousands of jobs are being done and people are suspicious.” doubt about the influence of pharmaceutical and pre-pharmaceutical companies on this process in general. “
Edward Friedland, a spokesman for the court, said that according to court policy, none of the three judges would comment on the case. He confirmed that each of the three judges was assigned the teacher’s case at random.
There is disagreement among experts as to whether the judges should withdraw. Rebecca Roiphe, a professor at the New York School of Law, said it seemed to her that no one was obligated to do so.
“The chance that this New York lawsuit will affect the stock price of a company like Pfizer, which has a market capitalization of about $300 billion, is negligible,” she said. “It seems that the judges have instead leaned toward absurd assumptions about their ability to be fair.”
But James Sample, a law professor at Hofstra University, says the problem of dispassionately appearing is real.
“Do I think Judge Caproni and Judge Ramos can be fair in hearing this case? Totally possible,” he said. “But upon hearing the case it became clear that they held important positions in an interested party that did not pass the optical test. And in the refusal law, the optical test matters. “
