WSJ

A lawyer for U.S. District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin filed a motion Wednesday challenging a federal appellate court’s rare decision last week to remove her from a case in which she ordered a monitor to oversee changes to the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk policy.

Judge Scheindlin was “completely blindsided” by the three-judge panel’s Oct. 31 ruling that she had “run afoul” of the code of conduct by improperly assigning a stop-and-frisk case to herself in 2007 and subsequently giving several media interviews, according to the motion.

The motion says that federal procedural rules assure judges accused of judicial misbehavior receive notice and “an opportunity to seek leave to be heard.”

The motion requests that the appellate panel, from the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, vacate its own order or that its decision be reviewed en banc—in which all the Second Circuit’s judges, from Vermont to New York, gather and review their colleagues’ ruling.

The motion, filed in the Second Circuit on Wednesday by New York University School of Law professor Burt Neuborne, who said he was retained by the judge, alleged that her due process rights had been violated. Judge Scheindlin declined to comment, as did city officials.

On Oct. 29, the panel presided over a hearing regarding the city’s request to stay, pending an appeal, Judge Scheindlin’s August ruling that the NYPD’s stop-and-frisk program was unconstitutionally racially biased. The stay sought to block the judge’s order to install a monitor to the program in which police stop and sometimes frisk people they suspect of committing crimes.

Two days later, the appellate judges returned an order sue sponte, or without request from either party, to remove Judge Scheindlin from the case. Legal experts couldn’t recall another case in which a federal judge was removed without a request from the litigants.