On Tuesday, Texas voters have their last opportunity to decide whether the state should change the makeup of the group that disciplines judges.
Advocates say it’s an overdue strengthening of the state’s judicial accountability systems, but opponents worry it will give Gov. Greg Abbott undue power over the judicial branch, politicizing what is supposed to be an independent body.
Currently, the 13-member State Commission on Judicial Conduct is made up of six judges, appointed by the Supreme Court of Texas; two attorneys appointed by the State Bar of Texas; and five citizens appointed by the governor. Former members of the commission say this balance ensured no single group on their own constituted the majority needed to discipline a judge.
If voters approve Proposition 12, the lawyers would be replaced by two additional citizen members appointed by Abbott, cutting the State Bar out of the commission entirely.
“If the governor gets seven and the judges get six, then the governor can get a majority, every time,” said Amy Suhl, a former citizen member of the commission who believes she was removed in 2019 after voting in a way Abbott didn’t agree with.
The groups that advocated for this proposal focused on judicial conflicts of interest, poor clearance rates and slow access to justice. But Abbott has honed in on the piece that would allow stricter penalties for judges who do not grant sufficient bail.
“Activist judges have too much discretion to let repeat offenders out on bail, only to see them harm more Texans,” said Andrew Mahaleris, Abbott’s press secretary, in a statement. “Proposition 12 ensures that judges who fail to uphold their duties will face stricter consequences.”
Push for judicial accountability
Despite working as a court reporter and in the Texas Legislature, Jennifer Lundy didn’t know anything about the State Commission on Judicial Conduct until she filed a complaint a few years ago against a judge who she felt was violating the terms of his office by inappropriately influencing a jury, speaking rudely from the bench and threatening political retribution against people who criticized him.
She found the complaint process difficult to navigate and ultimately unsatisfying; the complaint was dismissed without action. In 2024, the commission received about 1,100 complaints and just 49 resulted in discipline. The commission can suspend judges from the bench, but more commonly issues censures or admonitions, or requires the judge to undergo additional training. Many of the sanctions are private, meaning the public aren’t made aware of the outcome.
“People file and nothing happens,” Lundy said in an interview over the summer. “We’re not saying we want everyone in the world to complain about their judge, but there are a lot of people who have legitimate complaints … We want to know when our judges are not acting the way they should.”
Lundy founded Texans for Judicial Accountability and began advocating for changes to the commission at the Legislature earlier this year. At the same time, some Republican lawmakers were growing frustrated with judges in the state’s biggest, bluest counties who they believed were not holding people accused of violent crimes on sufficient bail.
At a Senate committee hearing, state Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, said it was “troubling to see instances where judges appeared astray from upholding the law as it’s written. … This is especially critical when it comes to bail decisions involving violent offenders, where lives are at stake and the consequences of judicial missteps can be devastating.”
Lawmakers approved Senate Bill 293, which expanded the definition of “official misconduct” to include failure to meet deadlines, persistent or willful violation of bail laws and violating tele-court laws. It set out stricter timelines for investigations into judicial misconduct, required judges to turn in quarterly performance statistics and removed the commission’s ability to issue private sanctions.
After some legislative jockeying at the end of session, the bill also gave judges a 25% raise to encourage high quality candidates to run for office.
“Most judges are doing a fabulous job,” Huffman said. “There is nothing in this bill that will hurt a good judge, nothing. They will get a raise.”
Lawmakers paired SB 293 with a constitutional amendment, Senate Joint Resolution 27, to change the makeup of the judicial conduct commission. Lundy’s group originally just wanted to add more citizen members, but the version that passed swapped out the lawyers instead.
“My intent was going to make the public citizens a majority, and that’s going to be fabulous for us, because that’s the only way you can have true oversight,” she said.
Steve Fischer, a lawyer who previously served on the commission, said the citizen members often relied on the attorney members to offer a perspective from inside the courtroom.
“By seeing so many judges and practicing so many places, we get a feel for what’s acceptable, what’s not acceptable,” he said. “We know the law in a different way and have a different perspective than even the judge members.”
Concerns about politicization
When the resolution passed, there wasn’t much attention paid to the authority it would give Abbott to appoint the judicial overseers. But in the months leading up to the election, some have begun ringing alarm bells.
Fischer, who opposes Proposition 12, said he felt the citizen members he served with were notably partisan on an otherwise apolitical committee. He said the committee took a break from their work to watch the impeachment hearings for President Donald Trump, and the citizen members cheered every time a member of the U.S. House voted against impeachment.
“I thought that whole thing was in bad taste, because we always had a busy docket, we had a lot of work and a lot of investigation and that wasn’t the kind of break I thought we should take,” he said.
The State Bar of Texas has not taken a position on Proposition 12, a spokesperson said.
Suhl, the former citizen member, is also worried about partisan bias.
As a member of the commission, she was asked in 2019 to vote on whether to sanction a Waco judge who refused to officiate same-sex weddings. Judge Dianne Hensley had publicly stated her intent to continue officiating marriages between men and women, which seemed like a clear case of discrimination to Suhl.
Suhl and another citizen member who had both been appointed in an off-year when the Legislature wasn’t in session, voted to sanction Hensley. She learned shortly thereafter that she would not be put forward for confirmation by the Senate, which is required for permanent appointments. In a phone call Suhl recorded between her and the governor’s staff, and obtained by the Houston Chronicle, the staffers seemed to be encouraging her to vote with Abbott’s views in mind.
“When we appoint people, we appreciate so much that people are willing to serve and hope that people understand that they’re serving the governor, not themselves,” one staffer is heard saying on the recording.
A spokesperson for Abbott said at the time that all appointment decisions were made based solely on merit. His office did not respond to a recent question about Suhl’s departure.
This week, after six years of legal wrangling over Hensley’s case, the Texas Supreme Court finally ruled that she should not have been sanctioned for refusing to officiate gay weddings. The commission had already withdrawn Hensley’s sanction, but this ruling, made on religious freedom grounds, is expected to have wide-ranging implications for ongoing legal challenges to same-sex marriage.
That this case is finally getting resolved at the same time that voters are being asked to give Abbott more power over judges is notable to Suhl.
“I would not give [Abbott] those powers, just based on what I experienced,” she said. “I think it was important that I could ask questions of a diverse group of people on that board, get diverse perspectives and think of something that maybe somebody else might not think of.”
Disclosure: State Bar of Texas has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
