Federal appellate courts almost never remove an Article III judge from a case, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit did so Friday for the third time in three years to U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes of Houston.
In a unanimous opinion issued Jan. 29, a three judge panel of the Fifth Circuit reversed a summary judgment dismissing an employment discrimination lawsuit by a former professor against two Texas universities and their respective systems because Judge Hughes did not provide the professor with a fair and impartial forum.
But the Fifth Circuit panel went further, ordering Southern District of Texas Chief District Judge Lee Rosenthal to reassign the case to another federal judge because Judge Hughes refused to allow the plaintiff to conduct basic discovery and because he made highly prejudicial statements against the plaintiff.
“From the outset of these lawsuits, the district judge’s actions evinced a prejudgment of [Professor Audrey] Miller’s claims,” Judge Cory Wilson wrote for the panel. “Miller asks this court to reassign her cases. We find her request warranted.”
In 2018, the Fifth Circuit scolded Judge Hughes for making “demeaning, inappropriate” comments in his courtroom about a woman federal prosecutor. In 2017, the appellate court also reversed Judge Hughes in a hazardous workplace environment lawsuit and removed the litigation from him because he dismissed the case while severely limiting the ability of the plaintiff to conduct proper discovery.
“We have a sense of déjá vu,” Judge Wilson wrote in the 20-page opinion.
In the current case, Miller sued Sam Houston State University and the Texas State University System when she was denied tenure 2013. She filed charges of sex discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
A year later, the University of Houston interviewed Miller for one of three faculty positions. Court records showed the UH search committee ranked her as the second highest candidate. But UH decided against hiring Miller after talking with Sam Houston State University officials.
In September 2015, Miller filed a federal lawsuit against Sam Houston and Texas State University System officials. A month later, she filed a lawsuit against UH.
Judge Wilson, in the 20-page opinion, pointed out that Judge Hughes “dismissed sua sponte” Miller’s claims against the university system “countenancing no discussion regarding the dismissal” at the case’s initial management conference.
At the same court conference, lawyers for Miller said they opposed consolidating the two separate lawsuits against Sam Houston and UH. Judge Hughes responded:
“I will get credit for closing two cases when I crush you. How will that look on your record?”
“And things went downhill from there,” Judge Wilson wrote. “The court summarily denied Miller’s subsequent motion for reconsideration, denied Miller’s repeated requests for leave to take discovery (including depositions of material witnesses), and eventually granted summary judgment in favor of SHSU and UHD, dismissing all claims.”
At the same proceeding in 2016, Judge Hughes made several comments regarding Miller’s conduct.
“Now, to be candid with you, . . . there is nothing that [Miller] didn’t complain about. Anything anybody did for two and a half years, three years, was all for some ulterior motive,” Judge Hughes stated. “As near as I can tell, [Miller’s] only complaint here is likely she was paid less but that she didn’t get tenure.
“I have never thought about it, but I have had more tenure decisions than you can imagine working here,” Judge Hughes continued. “You wouldn’t think professors were litigious, but apparently they are.”
At another pretrial conference in 2016, Judge Hughes asked lawyers for the two universities if they had taken Miller’s deposition.
Miller’s counsel asked, “May we take depositions as well?”
“No,” Judge Hughes responded.
But the judge ordered that Miller be deposed three weeks later “in Judge Hughes’s Jury Room.”
Judge Wilson noted that Judge Hughes “actually attended parts of the deposition and participated.”
At one point in the deposition, Judge Hughes admonished Miller. “If you’re unhappy with the rulings I’ve made about discovery, that’s fine. Free Country. This is not a place to discuss your feelings. It’s a place to answer [opposing counsel’s] questions. You have sued his client – their – their clients’ people, and they have a right to know exactly why.”
Following the deposition, Judge Hughes held another hearing.
“Within the first minute of that hearing,” Judge Wilson wrote, “the district judge queried TSUS and UHD’s counsel: ‘So are you going to move for summary judgment?’ — clearly implying that they should.”
In its petition to the appellate court, Terrence B. Robinson, who represents Wilson, cited McCoy v. Energy XXI GOM, a Fifth Circuit decision from 2017.
“In that case, the same district judge imposed substantially similar discovery restrictions to those imposed here,” Judge Wilson wrote. “Specifically, the district judge denied almost all requests for discovery and permitted only the deposition of the plaintiff and ‘the disclosure by the defendants of certain documents pertaining to the specific [object] at issue.’
“On appeal, we reversed and remanded the case on summary judgment grounds, finding genuine issues of material fact existed, even with the limited discovery that had been permitted,” Judge Wilson wrote. “But we also noted that ‘[t]he district court abused its discretion in refusing to allow [the plaintiff] to conduct sufficient discovery . . . to support the allegations he had fairly raised.
“The district court’s discovery restrictions in the instant cases are strikingly similar to those in McCoy. To put it simply, the court’s discovery restrictions suffocated any chance for Miller fairly to present her claims.”