Detroit Judge Not Immune From Suit For ‘Scaring’ Teen Who Fell Asleep In His Courtroom

A Detroit district court judge can be sued over actions that he took against a teenager who fell asleep during a vocational program in his courtroom, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled.

The plaintiff in Till v King (Docket Nos. 25-1558 and 25-1614) sued 36th District Court Judge Kenneth King on behalf of her 15-year-old daughter, ELG. The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, asserted that Judge King ordered that ELG be handcuffed, required that she put on a jail jumpsuit and confined her in a holding cell for several hours. The complaint further alleged that Judge King conducted a public “mock trial,” threatened ELG with juvenile detention and asked her fellow students to decide whether she should go home or go to jail. Notably, no case number, court order or court record documented these “mock trial” proceedings.

The plaintiff’s complaint asserted that Judge King violated ELG’s Fourth Amendment rights under 42 USC §1983, as well as various Michigan tort laws.

Judge King filed a motion to dismiss the complaint, claiming he was entitled judicial immunity. When the U.S. District Court denied the motion, Judge King filed an interlocutory appeal to the 6th Circuit.

The 6th Circuit affirmed, finding that Judge King was not entitled to have the lawsuit dismissed based on judicial immunity. According to the 6th Circuit, the plaintiff set forth sufficient allegations demonstrating that Judge King was not performing a function “normally” performed by a judge and was not acting in his “judicial capacity” at the time of the incident.

Judge Ronald Lee Gilman, Judge Richard Allen Griffin and Judge Chad A. Readler were on the 6th Circuit panel that issued the decision.

In addition to the plaintiff’s lawsuit, Judge King also faces judicial misconduct charges over the incident. According to reports, the Judicial Tenure Commission’s misconduct case against Judge King was recently settled. However, the details of the parties’ agreement has not yet been made public because the Michigan Supreme Court still has to review the proposed settlement. (See, “Deal reached in misconduct case vs. Detroit judge who had sleepy teen detained,” Michigan Lawyers Weekly.)

‘Scare Her Straight’

On August 13, 2024, ELG attended a vocational program for teenagers that took place in Judge King’s courtroom. ELG fell asleep while Judge King was talking to the students about his legal career. This apparently “offended” the judge, and so he devised “a plan to ‘scare her [ELG] straight.’” Judge King then instructed court officers to place ELG in handcuffs. The judge forced ELG to put on a prison jumpsuit and ordered that she be locked in a detention cell for several hours.

Later that same day, Judge King put ELG on “mock trial” in front of the other students in the program. This “mock trial” was streamed on the court’s YouTube channel. While the court record did not indicate how the mock trial ended, ELG was reportedly allowed to go home “without further incident.”

The plaintiff, as ELG’s mother and acting on her daughter’s behalf, subsequently filed this lawsuit against Judge King in the U.S. District Court. The plaintiff’s complaint asserted various causes of action, including:

• malicious prosecution and unlawful arrest under 42 USC §1983 as alleged violations of ELG’s Fourth Amendment rights.

• Michigan state-law claims of 1) intentional infliction of emotional distress, 2) invasion of privacy and 3) false arrest and imprisonment.

Judge King filed a motion to dismiss the case, claiming that his alleged conduct was shielded by judicial immunity. After the U.S. District Court denied Judge King’s motion, he filed this interlocutory appeal.

No Immunity For ‘Non-Judicial’ Actions

In its analysis, the 6th Circuit focused on whether the actions taken by Judge King were “judicial” or “non-judicial.” The first factor to consider in this assessment, the 6th Circuit said, was whether the judge’s actions reflected a “function normally performed by a judge.”

Here, Judge King claimed that his actions indeed reflected a “function normally performed by a judge” because he was “control[ling] the form and the function of [his] courtroom” and he was “reprimand[ing]” ELG for “flouting the judicial authority.”

At the outset, the 6th Circuit pointed out that not all actions taken by a judge in his or her courtroom are protected by judicial immunity. “A line must … be drawn between the actions that a judge can take in his courtroom under the cloak of judicial immunity and those that he cannot. … To qualify as a judicial act, a judge’s actions must ‘further[] [an] official act or sanction.’”

In this case, the plaintiff “put forth sufficient allegations to show that Judge King’s actions did not further an ‘official act or sanction,’ … but rather related to Judge King’s ‘private interests,’ …,” the 6th Circuit observed. “Indeed, [the plaintiff] alleges that Judge King had ELG locked in a ‘holding cell’ and conducted a ‘phony mock trial’ only because Judge King was offended by ELG nodding off while he was lecturing about his career as a lawyer. And Judge King is alleged to have ‘admitted to the press’ that he was simply intending to ‘scare’ ELG because she had ‘disrespect[ed]’ him.”

Further, there was no case number, court order or “any other court record” associated with what occurred, the 6th Circuit emphasized. “This matters because the existence of a court record or order indicates that a judge’s actions constituted judicial acts. … The absence of such an order or record here therefore suggests the opposite – that Judge King’s actions were nonjudicial.”

To support its decision, the 6th Circuit relied on the 8th Circuit’s ruling in Rockett ex rel. K.R. v Eighmy. In that case, the 8th Circuit held that a judge was not entitled to judicial immunity for disciplining two children who were in the courthouse. “We find persuasive the [8th] Circuit’s holding that the judge’s effort to discipline and scare the children did not reflect a ‘function normally performed by a judge.’”

Notably, the 6th Circuit rejected Judge King’s assertion that he was entitled to judicial immunity under its 2023 decision in Orta v Repp. “In addition to Orta being unpublished and therefore nonprecedential, the facts of Orta are materially distinguishable from the facts here. The judge in that case was on the bench preparing for a case to be called when he ordered the plaintiff to take a drug test. … The judge also formally held the plaintiff in contempt and sentenced her to jail. … Here, by contrast, Judge King had left the bench, taken off his robe, and was speaking to teenage students in a vocational program about his career as a lawyer. And there is no case number, order, or any other court record associated with the events that transpired.”

Further, “Judge King makes little effort to apply precedents beyond Orta to the facts of this case,” the 6th Circuit observed. “Instead, he cites to several additional cases from our sister circuits and the Supreme Court that address judicial immunity. He asserts that ‘[u]nder all Federal and State case law, [the plaintiff’s] arguments must fail.’ To the contrary, th[ose]cases are readily distinguishable.”

Overall, the plaintiff’s allegations “describe Judge King as abusing the machinery of the court through fake proceedings designed to scare ELG because she offended him while he was telling a group of teenagers about his career as a lawyer,” the 6th Circuit said. “Based on these allegations, we conclude that [the plaintiff] has put forth sufficient facts to show that Judge King’s actions did not reflect a ‘function normally performed by a judge.’”

Next, the 6th Circuit turned to the second factor in determining the nature of Judge King’s actions: whether “the parties dealt with [the judge] in his or her judicial capacity.”

The plaintiff asserted that ELG encountered Judge King in his courtroom “only after all judicial proceedings had ended, and Judge King was using the location solely to lecture the students in the vocational program,” the 6th Circuit noted. “[The plaintiff] has thus plausibly alleged that ELG encountered Judge King in his ‘private, non-judicial life’ as a lecturer or teacher.”

According to the 6th Circuit, the plaintiff’s argument was “supported by the fact that, at the time of ELG’s ‘mock trial,’ court was no longer in session. And, according to the amended complaint, Judge King himself confirmed that the purpose of the ‘mock trial’ was simply to ‘scare’ ELG because she had ‘disrespect[ed]’ him.”

Based on the foregoing, the plaintiff “has … pleaded facts that show that, at the time of Judge King’s interactions with ELG, he was not acting in his judicial capacity,” the 6th Circuit held. “In sum, [the plaintiff] has set forth factual allegations showing that Judge King was neither performing a ‘function normally performed by a judge’ nor acting in his ‘judicial capacity.’ We therefore conclude that Judge King is not entitled to judicial immunity at the motion-to-dismiss stage of this case.”