Three Judges Taught at CU While Ruling on University Cases

By Michael Karlik | Colorado Politics

A national report identified other judges who did not recuse from cases where one of the parties was the university where they taught on the side.

Three of Colorado’s sitting federal judges taught part-time at the University of Colorado’s law school while they handled civil cases involving the university or associated entities.

On July 30, the advocacy group Fix the Court released a report naming 24 federal judges throughout the country who did not recuse themselves from cases in which one of the parties was the university where they also taught as adjunct professors. The report identified U.S. Magistrate Judge N. Reid Neureiter as someone who did not recuse from multiple cases involving CU.

However, Colorado Politics’ independent docket review determined that Neureiter, U.S. Magistrate Judge Timothy P. O’Hara and U.S. District Court Judge Daniel D. Domenico all taught at least one course at Colorado Law. At the same time, they had cases pending before them in which CU itself, its board of regents, another of its schools or its medical authority was a defendant in a civil case.

“It’s a clear ‘appearance of impropriety’ problem, and it’s also a problem in that judges should generally not hear cases involving the entities that are paying them,” wrote Fix the Court. “Everyone knows that the Notre Dame Law School is an integral part of Notre Dame University, as are the law schools of Yale University, the University of Texas, the University of Colorado, and more to their parent institutions.”

The group noted that it had not identified all instances of federal judges handling cases involving the universities at which they teach. Fix the Court also acknowledged that judicial guidance does not mandate recusal, but simply asks judges to consider the totality of the circumstances when deciding if their teaching role should trigger disqualification.

However, the report explained that U.S. Supreme Court Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett apparently took action to recuse themselves from cases involving the schools at which they taught when they sat on the Denver-based and Chicago-based appeals courts, respectively.

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