DISTRICT JUDGE PLANS TO RESIGN
18th Judicial District Judge Natalie Chase will resign after using a racial slur along with other complaints.
A judge in Colorado’s largest judicial district will resign after using a racial slur, employing derogatory language to speak about another judge, espousing opinions about racial justice from the bench and directing court employees to work on her personal business.
The Colorado Supreme Court on Friday censured 18th Judicial District Judge Natalie Chase and said in an order she failed “to maintain the high standards of judicial conduct required of a judge.” Chase agreed to resign next month and did not dispute the facts of the six incidents outlined in the court’s order.
Public censure of a Colorado judge is extremely rare, and most disciplinary proceedings are hidden from the taxpayers who pay judges’ salaries. Although more than 400 judges are working in the state at any time, only four judges were censured publicly from 2010 to 2020, according to a December review by The Denver Post.
Chase’s censure Friday comes as the state examines its secretive judicial disciplinary process after an investigation by The Post into allegations of sexual misconduct and harassment in the courts.
Chase in late January or early February 2020 drove two lowerlevel court employees to a training in Pueblo. During the drive, Chase asked one of the other employees, who is Black, why Black people can use the N-word and white people cannot along with other questions about the slur, according to the Supreme Court’s order. Chase, who is white, used the full word several times during the conversation and made the employee, who was trapped in the car and couldn’t leave, feel uncomfortable, hurt and angry.
“(The employee) has explained that Judge Chase’s use of the full N-word was ‘like a stab through
my heart each time,'” the order states.
“The (employee) did not feel free to express her discomfort or emotions due to fear of retaliation by Judge Chase.”
In February 2020, Chase told other court employees that she would boycott the 2020 Super Bowl “because she objected to the NFL players who were kneeling during the national anthem in protest of police brutality against Black people,” according to the order. Chase was sitting on the bench in her judicial robes as she spoke. Two of the employees in the room were Black.
After Minneapolis police killed George Floyd in May 2020, Chase once again opined from the bench while wearing her robes about racial justice and asked a Black court employee about the Black Lives Matter movement. Chase then said she believed “all lives matter.”
“You acknowledge you also undermined confidence in the impartiality of the judiciary by expressing your views about criminal justice, police brutality, race and racial bias, specifically while wearing your robe in court staff work areas and from the bench,” the order states. “You acknowledge that your statements violated Canon Rule 2.3, which prohibits a judge from manifesting bias or prejudice based on race or ethnicity by word or action.”
Chase later in the year called another judge a derogatory term in conversation with other court employees.
In addition, Chase directed her law clerk to edit personal emails for her and to research a personal legal matter not connected to her work.
Chase apologized for her actions to the Colorado Commission on Judicial Discipline and said she did not intend any “racial animus” when she used the N-word. She acknowledged in the order that using the slur at all “has a significant negative effect on the public’s confidence in integrity of and respect for the judiciary.”
Chase in 2014 became a judge for the judicial district, which includes Arapahoe, Douglas, Elbert and Lincoln counties. She previously worked as a part-time municipal judge for the city of Glendale, a prosecutor for the city of Aurora and in private practice, according to a biography posted on the Colorado Bar Association’s website. She also served in leadership positions for the Arapahoe County Bar Association and the the Colorado Bar Association.
An attorney for Chase did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent Friday evening.