Litigation

Is AL Recusal Law in Limbo?

By Peter Hardin

For 15 years, Alabama has had a law on the books that judges should recuse themselves if their campaign got a least $2,000 from a party to a case. But it never has been enforced.

Now the recusal law is getting attention, according to a Birmingham News article, thanks to a lawsuit filed by Benjamin Little (photo), an Anniston city councilman.

Little wants to give money to judicial campaigns, and he is a party to lawsuits that are pending. He wants to see the enforcement of the law blocked until the U.S. Department of Justice reviews it under the federal Voting Rights Act.

Little is fretting that if the law were enforced, it could “deprive (him) the opportunity to have the judicial candidates of choice participate in judicial decisions involving his cases, both in his personal and official capacities, on the basis of political contributions,” his legal complaint states.

Initially, the state attorney general’s office submitted the recusal  law to the Justice Department for routine review. But later, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions withdrew the request. In 1997, an ethics panel of the state Supreme Court recommended the law’s revision.

?We?ll clean up and clear up, once it is clarified,? Little told the Anniston Star.

His lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, and Little was represented by John Keeney, who chairs the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Election Law.

Full post as published by The Gavel on July 22, 2010 (boomark / email).