FOP recommends 'no' vote for 10 Cook County jurists seeking retention

Updated 10/15/24 and 10/21/24 to provide corrected FOP list

The Fraternal Order of Police, Chicago John Dineen Lodge No. 7 has made its endorsements for the November election. The entire endorsement list appears as a pop-up on top of the front page of the FOP website.

The FOP has made endorsements in many... but not all... Cook County judicial retention races. To be specific, the FOP has encouraged 'yes' votes for 46 of the 78 jurists on the ballot, 'no' votes for 10, and makes no mention of the 22 other judges seeking retention.

Those drawing negative recommendations from the union representing the Chicago Police rank and file are Appellate Justice David W. Ellis and Circuit Court Judges Carol M. Howard, Ramon Ocasio III, Erica L. Reddick, John H. Ehrlich, Michael Tully Mullen, Peter Michael Gonzalez, Lindsay Huge, James "Jamie" Shapiro, and Arthur Wesley Willis.

By making this list, Judge Mullen earns a unique distinction -- the FOP urges a vote against him, as do the authors of the strongly anti-police Girl, I Guess voters guide. (Question No. 1 in the Girl, I Guess criteria for evaluating judicial candidates is "Are you a cop?") I have no inside information on this, but I strongly suspect that drawing a negative recommendation from these diametically opposed groups is not a distinction that Judge Mullen would have voluntarily sought.

In the post linked in the preceding paragraph, I suggested that the basis of the negative Girl, I Guess recommendation came, at least in part, from Judge Mullen's ruling in a case involving the FOP. Injustice Watch made mention of this case in its summary regarding Judge Mullen:

Mullen has presided over an ongoing legal battle between the city of Chicago and the Fraternal Order of Police over whether most serious Chicago police disciplinary cases can be decided through closed-door arbitration. In March, he ruled that police officers could have serious disciplinary cases heard by arbitrators instead of the Chicago Police Board, but those hearings needed to be open to the public. The city and union have yet to agree on a new structure for arbitration hearings.

In 2017, Mullen dismissed a case brought by former Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn calling for the Chicago Board of Education to be transformed into an elected body rather than a body appointed by the mayor. Mullen ruled that mayoral control of the board does not violate the voting rights of Chicago residents.

Girl, I Guess may have been upset by the second cited ruling, too; we can't know for certain because Girl, I Guess did not explain any of its ratings, positive or negative, except for four 'super nos.' Of course, the FOP does not explain its ratings of judicial candidates either. But I will go out on a limb here and guess that the FOP was not overly concerned with the school board ruling cited by Injustice Watch.

I venture no opinion about the merits of Judge Mullen's ruling. But I will suggest that, in general, being a good judge doesn't mean making everyone happy (except, perhaps, in adoption cases) or even making one side happy and one side sad. Sometimes following where the law leads, as the Code of Judicial Conduct requires, 'unswayed by public clamor or fear of criticism' (Rule 2.4), and "without regard to whether the judge approves or disapproves of the law in question" (Rule 2.2, comment [2]), may leave everyone unhappy. It happens.

Without further preface, then, herewith the FOP's judicial endorsements (initially taken from the pages of its October newsletter, but, as a reader pointed out after this article first appeared, there was a discrepancy between the newsletter and the pop-up on the FOP website, a couple of pages from the pop-up have now been substituted):