Kansas judge accused of harassment at work has employment cases sent to other judges
Nine employment discrimination lawsuits pending in federal court were reassigned this week, away from U.S. District Court of Kansas Judge Carlos Murguia, who himself has been accused of workplace harassment.
No reason was given for reassigning the cases originally under Murguia’s purview to other judges in Kansas. Kansas Chief Judge Julie Robinson referred questions from The Star to court clerk Tim O’Brien, who said he could not comment. The Administrative Office of the United States Courts also referred questions to O’Brien.
Dockets for each of the nine lawsuits do not reflect lawyers for plaintiffs or defendants requesting a new judge. In one of the cases, Murguia had recently ordered a trial in October. Murguia was still active in other types of cases this week.
Murguia did not respond to a request for comment.
A federal judge since 1999, Murguia was the subject of an investigation into judicial misconduct that started in 2018. Last year, the Tenth Circuit Judicial Council released an order reprimanding Murguia for harassing female court employees with sexually suggestive comments, inappropriate text messages and excessive after-hours contacts.
Murguia also was admonished for carrying on an extra-marital affair with a drug user who was on probation at the time and was later imprisoned for state court felony convictions. The admonishment said the affair compromised the judge and put him in a position in which he could be extorted. Murguia also was cited for habitual tardiness to court proceedings because he played basketball during lunch.
Murguia at the time apologized for his conduct.
The Tenth Circuit Judicial Council said that Murguia’s misconduct did not rise to the level that it would refer the matter to Congress for impeachment.
The Murguia matter remains under review by the Committee on Judicial Conduct and Disability, according to a letter from James Duff, director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts.
Duff’s letter, sent on Feb. 7 to Rep. Henry Jackson, D-Georgia and chairman of the House Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet, said he would not attend a hearing Thursday meant to discuss protecting federal judicial employees from sexual harassment. Duff said his office could not participate in a hearing in which the Murguia situation could be addressed and raise due process concerns.
Duff was responding to a Feb. 6 letter from the House Judiciary Committee that demanded answers from Robinson, the Tenth Circuit and the Administrative Office of the United States Courts on what each had done to protect employees who Murguia harassed and whether it had adopted a system to let employees report misconduct.
In Murguia’s reprimand, it noted that harassed employees were reluctant to tell Murguia to stop his behavior because of the power he possessed as a federal judge.
At Thursday’s hearing, subcommittee chairman Henry Johnson noted that employees of the federal judicial branch, which amounts to 30,000 employees, do not enjoy the same protections under the law against workplace harassment.
“The laws that protect nearly every civilian employee in this country, public or private, from harassment, discrimination, isolation and retaliation, those rules do not protect employees of the judicial branch,” Johnson said.
The issue of harassment in the judicial branch came into the public eye in 2017 when Alex Kozinski, then a judge for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, stepped down from the bench amid allegations of sexual harassment by clerks and other employees.
