Legislators accuse state Supreme Court justice of bias

Conservative lawmakers are calling on a state Supreme Court justice to recuse herself from some cases after speaking at a rally for educators.

State Supreme Court Justice Mary Yu spoke at an April 21 rally organized by the Washington Education Association’s political action committee. Justice Yu will be hearing at least a couple cases relevant to the WEA in the coming months, so some in the state Legislature are calling this foul play.

“Justices usually try to maintain a modicum of impartiality even in this highly partisan and political world,” state Rep. Matt Manweller told KTTH’s Jason Rantz. “But we have two cases pending in which the WEA stands to make billions of dollars and the judge hearing the case is at their pep rally.”

One of the cases Manweller references is El Centro de la Raza, et al v. Washington, where justices will be tasked with determining whether the charter school system is legal. The other is the long-running McCleary case, where the state Supreme Court ruled that law makers were failing in their duty to fully fund education.

“This is about as clear a violation of the judicial ethics cannon as you can get,” Manweller said.

Justice Yu told the Tacoma News Tribune that she has no plans to recuse herself and the only “agenda” she had was to encourage teachers to invite judges into the class room. Manweller said they’re going to attempt to force a recusal.

“We have two options,” Manweller said. “We can file an official complaint with the judicial ethics committee. I understand that someone is going to do that, it’s not a legislator but I think there are several people looking at that option. The other option we have is to make a limited motion to intervene in the case for the purposes of seeking her recusal.”

Follow @https://twitter.com/jasonrantz