IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF ILLINOIS

EASTERN DIVISION

KIRSHA BROWN-YOUNGER, )

)

Plaintiff, )

)

v. ) Case No. 12 C 1979

)

LULU.COM, et al., )

)

Defendants. )

MEMORANDUM OPINION AND ORDER

This Court's comprehensive July 3 memorandum opinion and order ("Opinion") sought to

reserve the label of "lie" to the most egregious of the multiple misstatements and

mischaracterizations that have marked the filings by plaintiff Kirsha Brown-Younger

("Brown-Younger") in this case -- to statements so patently and blatantly false that the possibility

of innocent mistake rather than deliberate falsehood appears nonexistent. Now, however,

Brown-Younger has seemingly outdone herself with her most recent (July 5) filing.

Focusing again on what appears to have become her favorite target -- this Court -- despite

the quick rejections of her recusal motion by the Chief Judges of this District Court and the Court

of Appeals, Brown-Younger has submitted a document bearing this caption:

2nd Motion To Recuse

Motion for Abatement of All Interim Proceedings

Motion for Stay of Proceedings To Enforce a Judgment

Motion Requesting Hearing.

Employing the term "facts" in a dictionary-defying fashion, the document begins with this

"Introduction/Statement of Facts":
PURSUANT to the Supreme Court Advisory Committee Disqualifications and

Recusal Rule (1)(b), (1)(2), and Pursuant to Title 28, Sec. 455, and sec. 144, a

Federal Judge shall recuse himself if his impartiality has been reasonably

questioned. In accordance with the Supreme Court Recusal and Disqualification

rule (3), a Judge should immediately disqualify or recuse himself without any

further proceedings, if a Judge refuses to disqualify himself, then the Motion must

be submitted to the Presiding Judge, to hear this motion, or the Presiding Judge

must allow another Judge to hear this motion. See, People v. Botham, 629 P.2d

589, 595 (Colo. 1981); C.J.C. Canon 3(C)(1).

"Once facts have been set forth that create a reasonable inference

of a "bent of mind" that will prevent the judge from dealing fairly

with the party seeking recusal, it is incumbent upon the trial judge

to recuse himself. A trial judge must accept the affidavits filed

with the motion as true, even though the judge believes that the

statements contained in the affidavits are false or that the meaning

attributed to them by the party seeking recusal is erroneous". 

Johnson v. District Court, 674 P.2d 952 (Colo. 1982).

In candor, that filing has astonished this Court. This Court has always been sensitive to

considerations of professional ethics on the part of both lawyers and judges -- even before taking

the bench, while in the private practice of law, it had served as Chairman of the Chicago Bar

Association's Committee on Professional Ethics and as a member of the American Bar

Association's committee on the same subject. And as to judicial ethics alone, this Court served

for a number of years as the first retained general counsel to the Illinois Judicial Inquiry Board

(the body charged with initiating and handling claims of misconduct on the part of Illinois state

court judges at all levels -- even its Supreme Court). Since coming to the bench, this Court has

taken pains to keep au courant in the field of judicial ethics.

So it was troubling indeed to encounter a reference to a "Supreme Court Advisory

Committee" that has assertedly adopted rules that would replace the long-standing self-policing

of recusal matters by the federal judiciary with a system under which any disgruntled litigant

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could bring a false charge and force a judge off of a case. And that was all the more astonishing

when that purported set of new rules had not been the subject of wide publicity or of any

communication at all on the part of the Administrative Office or the Federal Judicial Center, let

alone other sources of information to the federal judiciary. 

Hence this Court immediately asked one of its excellent law clerks to try to validate and

track down Brown-Younger's source. It took less than a minute for the law clerk, with the aid of

Google as a search engine, to turn up a document captioned: "Supreme Court Advisory

Committee Subcommittee Working Draft of Disqualification and Recusal Rule Proposal," a copy

of which has been attached as Ex. 1 to this Opinion. 

1

Ex. 1's self-identification as a "Subcommittee Working Draft" rather than, as

Brown-Younger would have it, an existing set of rules is disturbing enough. But what entirely

destroys the integrity of her current submission -- and the integrity of Brown-Younger herself --

is that the "Supreme Court" referred to in that working draft is not the United States Supreme

Court, which has no such Advisory Committee, but the Supreme Court of the State of Texas. 

Just take a look at the last two pages of Ex. 1, which first describe the proposed rule as one that

would replace current Rules 18(a) and 18(b) of the Texas Rules of Civil Procedure, and then

continue with a set of notes whose numbers match up precisely with the parenthetical note

 There is no question that the attached document is the source of Brown-Younger's

1

statement of "facts" -- a totally misleading label, as the ensuing text will demonstrate. Every one

of her above-quoted references to the purported Rules -- (b), (1) (2), and (3) -- as well as her

current filing's later references to "Rule (7)" and "Rule (5)" is an exact match to the numbering in

Ex. 1.

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references in the text of the working draft. All of those provisions obviously speak of Texas

procedures and potential rules, not of those in the federal system. 

2

So the bottom line is that Brown-Younger appears to have exhibited gross dishonesty in

her latest salvo. What has been said here obviously has nothing at all to do with her race -- after

all, lying and truth telling know no racial boundaries. Nor does it have anything to do with

Brown-Younger's so-far-unnamed (and to this Court unknown) disability -- unless, that is,

"disability" is the inability on her part to be truthful. And finally, as for any claimed bias because

of Brown-Younger's status as a pro se litigant, any lawyer who had engaged in the deception

disclosed here or heretofore would long since have been sanctioned for misconduct.

There is no need to repeat the citations and quotations in Opinion at 7-8, which are

exemplary of the standards for granting or denying recusals in the federal courts (though perhaps

not in Texas). Hence for the reasons set out here, Brown-Younger's second motion for this

Court's recusal is denied. And when Brown-Younger responds on or before July 24 to the issues

focused on in the Opinion, she must add an explanation as to her current filing as well.

__________________________________________

Milton I. Shadur

Senior United States District Judge

Date: July 6, 2012.

 Brown-Younger, who repeatedly describes herself as well-versed in law, also knows 2

better than to cite to three-decades-old Colorado state court decisions in the language quoted

earlier in this opinion, as though they had any force (or even any relevance) in the federal court

system. 

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