Illinois Supreme Court Says Partisanship a Problem for Cook County Judge but Ignores Its Own Issues

The Illinois Supreme Court is facing a lawsuit by a former Cook County judge who was canned for writing a column supportive of President Trump when he was not even on the bench, but as NRA board member Todd Vandermyde pointed out on social media, the state’s highest court has at least one justice who’s engaged in some blatant partisan politicking of her own without losing her job. 

Former Cook County Judge James R. Brown retired in 2020 but was brought back by the Illinois Supreme Court five years later, assigning him to Cook County’s traffic court to help address a backlog of cases. 

The move drew complaints by Democrat attorneys in Chicago, and in January of this year, just one month after assigning Brown to the traffic court, the state Supreme Court gave him the boot over a column he’d written about a month before he was recalled to service. 

In that column, titled “His Judgment Cometh, and That Right Soon,” Brown assailed what he called “lawfare” waged by Democratic activists and politicians in Illinois and elsewhere in the U.S. against President Donald Trump and his supporters.

He further singled out for criticism the controversial criminal prosecutorial and policy decisions of former Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx and other prosecutors, who Brown agreed had been propped up by billionaire left-wing activist George Soros and his political organizations to advance left-wing criminal justice reforms in Chicago and nationwide.

The complaining legal organizations asserted the column — which Brown authored and published when he was no longer a judge and before his recall — amounted to violations of the Illinois Code of Judicial Conduct, which require judges to “promote public confidence” in the courts.

The groups asserted the column was “wildly inappropriate for a member of the judiciary to be making” and showed Brown lacked “the temperament, judgment, independence, competence, impartiality and respect for the rule of law necessary for those who serve in the judiciary.”

In a brief filed in response to Brown’s lawsuit, the Illinois Supreme Court argues that Brown’s First Amendment rights have to take a back seat to the cour’s “obligation to ensure Illinois state courts remain free of perceived bias.”

But what about the perceived bias on the Illinois Supreme Court? 

Some group should file an amici brief arguing Rochford’s conflict for attending anti-gun rallies

IL Supreme Court says it can remove Cook Co. judge for pro-Trump column | Cook County Record | https://t.co/pviNhvjMGU

— @Freedom’ssteel (@FreedomSsteel) April 9, 2026

Vandermyde is referring to Illinois Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth M. Rochford, but the same could be said of Justice Mary K. O’Brien too. As Legal Newswire’s Jonathan Bilyk noted in is coverage of Brown’s lawsuit, the pair “notably ran highly partisan campaigns when they were elected to the court in 2022, accepting millions of dollars in campaign donations from Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker.” 

They also trumpeted endorsements from Democratic politicians and a variety of left-wing activist organizations, even as the state high court prepared to hear volatile cases challenging controversial state laws, including the state’s ban on so-called “assault weapons” and Pritzker’s signature criminal justice reforms abolishing cash bail in the state. 

Both Rochford and O’Brien refused requests from challengers to the gun ban law to recuse themselves, rejecting claims their clear alignment with Pritzker and other Democrats and progressive causes would cause parties and observers to question their impartiality on such hot partisan topics.

Rochford and O’Brien were also backed by Everytown for Gun Safety and Giffords, but when a Republican lawmaker asked them to exempt themselves from hearing the case challenging the state’s ban on so-called assault weapons and large capacity magazines, they refused to step aside.

In separate orders written by each of the two justices, O’Brien and Rochford noted that the plaintiffs did not point to any specific pledges or statements that would indicate a bias in the case. They both also argued that the contributions they had received were within the state’s campaign finance limits for judicial elections.

Both justices cited a case involving now-retired Justice Lloyd Karmeier, a Republican, who was asked in 2014 to recuse himself from hearing an appeal in a $10 billion class action lawsuit against tobacco giant Philip Morris. Plaintiffs in that case argued that Philip Morris’ parent company, Altria Group, had given $500,000 to a group that supported Karmeier.

“The claim that a judge may not hear a case because a party may have some association with a public interest group or political party that did support or may have supported the judge’s candidacy has no basis in the law, would be unworkable and is contrary to the very notion of an elected judiciary,” Rochford quoted Karmeier as writing at the time.

“When judges are elected, as the Illinois Constitution requires, it is inevitable (and entirely appropriate) that interest groups will support judges whose judicial philosophies they believe are most closely aligned with their own views,” Rochford’s quotation of Karmeier continued.

O’Brien quoted Karmeier as well, stating: “Litigants must not be permitted to create the grounds for recusal by criticizing the judge or casting sinister aspersions, nor may a party engage in ‘judge-shopping’ by manufacturing bias or prejudice that previously did not exist.”

Unlike Karmeier, though, Rochford and O’Brien directly benefited from the financial support of Democrat politicians like Pritzker, who was one of the defendants in the state-level litigation over the gun and magazine ban. And as Mom-at-Arms reported in August, 2023, Rochford actually attended and spoke at a Moms Demand Action fundraiser in Illinois ahead of the 2022 elections. 

Rochford wasn’t one step removed from the partisan politicians or gun control groups who supported her campaign. She was directly involved with anti-gun activists while running for the Supreme Court. That, to me, is a blatant violation of one of the rules of Illinois’ Code of Judicial Conduct:

“Except as may be specifically authorized in the context of judicial election campaigns, Rule 4.1 prohibits judges and judicial candidates from ‘publicly’ endorsing or making ‘speeches’ on behalf of political candidates or organizations.

The same code of conduct states that “A judge shall be disqualified in any proceeding in which the judge’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” Not “may” be disqualifed. Shall. 

Rochford didn’t just attend a Moms Demand Action fundraiser. According to a Twitter post that she retweeted, she actually spoke at the event. Despite that, her colleagues on the court declined to force her to recuse herself from hearing the challenge to the state’s gun and magazine ban. 

There’s nothing that can be done about that, but this information is highly relevant to Judge Brown’s litigation, and whether its through an amicus brief or a supplemental brief of his own, I hope that Brown is able to bring this blatant double standard to the attention of the federal judge who’s overseeing his lawsuit against the state of Illinois and its Supreme Court. 

Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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