As organizers of a campaign to recall New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell fought last month to reduce the number of signatures they needed, the judge presiding over the case did not disclose that she herself had signed the public recall petition.
Orleans Parish Civil District Judge Jennifer Medley, who last week endorsed an unusual deal between recall organizers and Louisiana Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin’s office to trim the recall threshold by 5,000 names, added her signature to the petition on Dec. 19, recall campaign records show.
That came as news to Ardoin’s office.
“We are just now being made aware of this allegation,” John Tobler, a spokesperson for Ardoin, said Wednesday. “We do not have enough information to provide a comment at this time.”
The bargain that Medley blessed lowered the bar for a recall vote by about 10%.
Even before then, she gave recall organizers a series of favorable rulings. She rejected efforts by election officials to have the case tossed before testimony was heard. When recall leader Eileen Carter took the stand, Medley refused to allow election officials to question Carter on the number of signatures the organizers had collected.
Neither Medley nor a court spokesperson would comment on Wednesday, citing the fact the case technically remains pending in her courtroom, though the dispute over the voter count appears settled.
Advocates and experts in judicial ethics agreed that Medley should have disclosed her support for Cantrell’s ouster, but were divided on whether she violated any ethical rules or should have recused herself from the legal challenge.
Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, a national judicial watchdog group, said Medley’s signature on the petition demonstrates “bias in favor of a party.” That meant she should have recused herself when the case landed in her courtroom.
“I as a reasonable person would think there’s bias given the signing of that petition,” Roth said.
“If I’m a litigant on whatever the opposite side of the recall is, I know because of public record where this judge comes out, and I don’t want her ruling on anything related to the recall campaign.”
Medley should have disclosed her support for the recall, but under Louisiana law, nothing required it, said Lafayette lawyer Clare Roubion, who often represents judges accused of misconduct.
Medley’s signature doesn’t fit any of the specific scenarios that the Legislature laid out in 2021 for when judges must disclose potential conflicts or bias, Roubion said.
“There’s nothing on its face improper about her having signed the petition, and having just signed the petition doesn’t make her so invested or interested in the outcome that she couldn’t be fair or impartial,” Roubion said.
Recall organizers sued Ardoin, a Republican who is elected statewide, on Feb. 16 in a case that originally included Orleans Registrar Sandra Wilson as a co-defendant. She was dismissed from the case, leaving Medley as the only remaining New Orleans official involved when she signed off on the deal.
A lawyer for Wilson declined comment. Lawyers for the recall campaign didn’t immediately comment.
Medley, 46, is serving her first six-year term on the civil court. Backed in large part by garbage magnate Sidney Torres IV, she won a bruising election fight in 2020 to unseat veteran Judge Chris Bruno for the Division F seat.
"We have not seen the proof of Judge Medley’s signature on a recall petition," said Cantrell attorney Marion Floyd. "If the story is indeed accurate and true, we find it very disturbing that there wasn’t full disclosure, immediately, when the case was allotted to her section."
So far, Medley is the only elected official whose name has surfaced in a signature count from about 10,000 pages of records that recall organizers surrendered to the newspaper last week to settle a court fight.
Unlike your choice of a candidate or ballot measure, recall signatures are public records under Louisiana law before the ink dries. Through the court, Medley would not say whether she was aware of that when she signed the Cantrell recall petition.
