The U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) on Friday filed a misconduct complaint against a federal judge in Washington over potential bias during hearings on a legal challenge to President Donald Trump’s executive order banning transgender people from serving in the military.
The complaint, filed by DOJ chief of staff Chad Mizelle, alleged that U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes engaged in “hostile and egregious misconduct” and violated the judicial code of conduct when she treated a department lawyer with disrespect during a two-day hearing in the case.
Mizelle cited two instances where Reyes questioned the attorney about his religious beliefs and used him “unwillingly as a physical prop” in a rhetorical exercise during the hearing.
In the first instance, Reyes asked the lawyer what he believed “Jesus would say to telling a group of people that they are so worthless, so worthless that we’re not going to allow them into homeless shelters.”
Mizelle said the question itself was problematic because it was irrelevant to the legal analysis of military policy and placed the lawyer in an “untenable position” to answer.
He commended the lawyer for his professional response to Reyes, as the lawyer answered: “The United States is not going to speculate about what Jesus would have to say about anything.”
Mizelle also pointed to Reyes’s use of the inappropriate abbreviation “WTF” when questioning the lawyer on his religious beliefs, saying that it demonstrated the judge’s lack of professional decorum.
The second instance involved Reyes physically directing the lawyer as part of “a rhetorical exercise” during an exchange about discrimination. In a hypothetical scenario, Reyes instructed the attorney to sit down because she decided to bar graduates of the University of Virginia Law School from her courtroom because “they’re all liars and lack integrity.”
In his complaint, Mizelle suggested that he views the judge’s physical direction as an attempt to embarrass the government counsel during the hearing.
“This directive served no legitimate judicial purpose and transformed an attorney appearing before the court into an unwilling participant in the judge’s unnecessary demonstration,” Mizelle stated. “Such treatment undermines the dignity of counsel and the decorum of the courtroom.”
Mizelle requested that appropriate action be taken to address the alleged violations and ensure future hearings are conducted with “dignity and impartiality.” He called for an investigation into the incidents to determine whether Reyes engaged in misconduct.
“An independent, impartial judiciary is fundamental to our system of justice,” he stated. “When judges demonstrate apparent bias or treat counsel disrespectfully, public confidence in the judicial system is undermined.”
The Epoch Times has reached out to Reyes’s chambers for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.
According to the order, the pursuit of those standards cannot be “diluted to accommodate political agendas or other ideologies harmful to unit cohesion.” The order directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth within 60 days to end what it called “invented and identification-based pronoun usage” that inaccurately reflects an individual’s sex.
The order also requires stricter separation between male and female service members in sleeping, changing clothes, and bathing.
