Commission to investigate allegations against judges

The commission that investigates and disciplines judges in Colorado has launched its own inquiry into allegations of harassment and misconduct in the state’s judiciary.

It is the fourth investigation launched following Denver Post stories in February that disclosed the allegations.

The Colorado Commission on Judicial Discipline this week hired Denver law firm Rathod Mohamedbhai as special counsel to look into assertions that judges, most of them men, fostered a culture of sexual harassment and were protected from their accusers.

“We felt we needed to do our own investigation,” commission executive director William Campbell told The Post on Friday. “We’re not presuming anything and we do not know where it leads. As the judicial disciplining body, we want to see if there’s anything that warrants our involvement.”

Results of the inquiry are confidential by law. Attorney Qusair Mohamedbhai on Friday said he had no additional comments.

The allegations surfaced when a high-ranking former official of Colorado’s Judicial Department who faced firing threatened a sexual-discrimination lawsuit exposing the misconduct. The former official, Mindy Masias, was instead given a $2.5 million contract for judicial training, according to the department’s former chief administrator, Chris Ryan.

The commission made its decision on Aug. 20, according to its website, but only after learning the

Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel, which disciplines lawyers, had launched its own inquiry and hired outside investigators.

Campbell said the commission felt it important to determine independently whether any of the alleged misconduct required their attention. The commission typically relies on the ARC to provide special counsel when it requires an investigation, but the potential conflict of interest in the current inquiry required them to hire their own.

“It’s not that we’re worried about anything they’d come up with, but we’re the judicial discipline commission, we should be investigating this thing,” he said.

The commission chose not to request the Colorado Attorney General’s office to investigate, which it would normally do if the ARC had a conflict, because no one else had either.

“We don’t know where this is going to lead, or whether additional conflicts will arise down the road and disqualify the AG’S office despite their best efforts to avoid them,” Campbell said.

Two other inquiries are also ongoing: The Supreme Court in August hired two Denver companies to investigate the alleged quid-procontract as well as the departmental culture; the Colorado Auditor’s office is looking into fraud allegations tied to the Masias contract.

The commission’s investigation is limited to sitting county or district court judges and extends to one year after they have retired or resigned.

The ARC’S extends to any authority licensed attorney, so a retired judge with an active law license is still subject to ARC oversight no matter how many years removed from the bench.

The contract at the center of the scandal is a $2.5 million five-year deal given to Masias in 2019. She was to be fired over financial irregularities that were uncovered the year before but took medical leave before that could happen, The Post has reported.

While on leave, a memo authored by the department’s then-human Resources Director Eric Brown was read to then-supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan “Ben” Coats describing dozens of incidents of misconduct that reached all the way to the state’s Court of Appeals and its Supreme Court that Masias was prepared to reveal in a lawsuit.

The memo, which the Supreme Court initially refused to release, alleges Masias was told to destroy a letter anonymously alleging sexism and harassment against the chief justice and another high-ranking employee; that “per the chief justice” a law clerk to the Court of Appeals was given a settlement agreement after she made harassment allegations in order to keep a jurist “safe” during selection to the Supreme Court; that the chief justice “took no action” against a district judge who sent pornography over judicial email and was later appointed as a chief judge in a judicial district.

It also lays out how female employees are mistreated, ignored, or simply terminated at rates far higher than men.