Accepting her resignation, the Colorado Supreme Court publicly censured a former court of appeals judge for (1) disclosing to an intimate, non-spousal partner the vote of a court of appeals division on a case prior to the issuance of the decision and (2) using inappropriate racial epithets in communications with her intimate partner.  In the Matter of Booras (Colorado Supreme Court March 11, 2019).  In March 2018, the Court had granted the request of the Commission on Judicial Discipline to suspend the judge with pay pending the disciplinary proceedings.  The judge resigned after the Commission recommended her removal.

In 2007, the judge began a 10-year relationship with a man whom she met online (“J.S.”).  J.S. told the judge that he was divorced and living in Denver, although the judge later learned that he was married and living in California.  They did not see each other frequently, but they communicated often, and the judge described their relationship as “intimate” and believed it would lead to marriage.

By early 2017, however, “the relationship was deteriorating, and Judge Booras had good reason to distrust J.S.”

On February 21, 2017, the judge and other judges in a division of the court of appeals heard oral argument in a case about the extent to which a state commission was required to consider public health and the environment in deciding whether to grant permits for oil and gas development.

The next morning, the judge sent an e-mail to J.S. that said:

We had an oral argument yesterday re: fracking ban where there was standing room only and a hundred people in our overflow video room.  The little Mexican is going to write in favor of the Plaintiffs and it looks like I am dissenting in favor of the Oil and Gas Commission.  You and Sid [a colleague of J.S.] will be so disappointed.

“The little Mexican” was a reference to one of Judge Booras’s colleagues, “a Latina who would ultimately write the opinion for the majority in that case.”  Judge Booras wrote the dissent.

At some point in 2018, J.S.’s wife contacted the judge, and the judge told her about the affair. Shortly thereafter, J.S. provided The Denver Post, the chief judge of the Court of Appeals, the governor, the Commission on Judicial Discipline, and counsel for the plaintiffs in the case several communications from the judge.

The Court found that the judge had disclosed confidential information — the court’s vote in the case — to a third party.  The Court also found that the judge “had used an inappropriate racial epithet in communicating with J.S.,” noting that it was not the first time as she had referred to her ex-husband’s new wife, a woman of Navajo descent, as “the squaw” in an e-mail to J.S a year earlier.

The Court held that the judge’s “use of an inappropriate racial epithet directed at one of her colleagues” and her disclosure of confidential information “obviously impaired harmony and trust among her co-workers . . . .”   The Court emphasized that the judge’s “relationship with the colleague at whom her ‘little Mexican’ comment was directed” was particularly affected, noting that the other judge had been “justifiably shocked and deeply hurt by Judge Booras’s comments” and that a close working relationships with other judges is “integral to a collaborative decision-making body” like the court of appeals.  The Court also explained that “knowledge of Judge Booras’s racially inappropriate comments could understandably have caused concern among parties of diverse backgrounds, and particularly those of Latino and Native American ancestry, who inevitably would have appeared before Judge Booras were she to have returned to the court of appeals.  The judicial system cannot function properly if public confidence in a court is eroded in this way.”

The judge argued that “a judge’s communications with an intimate partner should be given First Amendment protection unless the speech ‘violates a specific narrowly-tailored rule of judicial conduct or falls within an ordinary exception to the First Amendment.’”  Rejecting that argument, the Court held that “inappropriate racial epithets and derogatory remarks are not matters of legitimate public concern warranting First Amendment protection.”  The Court also concluded that any First Amendment interests “are outweighed by the state’s countervailing interests.”