A Justice Department official filed a complaint against a federal judge in Washington, D.C., on Friday after the judge excoriated a government lawyer during a hearing on President Donald Trump’s executive order barring transgender people from military service.
Justice Department chief of staff Chad Mizelle wrote in a letter to Washington’s appellate court that Judge Ana Reyes had “engaged in hostile and egregious misconduct” when she subjected a department lawyer to an unconventional grilling this week. Mizelle said she displayed a lack of impartiality and should be investigated.
Reyes, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, had scolded Justice Department trial attorney Jason Lynch during the two-day hearing, telling him his arguments in favor of Trump’s executive order displayed “animus” toward people who say they are transgender.
Mizelle pointed to two incidents that occurred during the hearing. The first involved Reyes demanding Lynch speculate on what he thought Jesus would say to “telling a group of people they are so worthless” that they could not enter a homeless shelter. The second came when Reyes ordered Lynch to sit down because, in a hypothetical world, she had decided no University of Virginia graduates could appear as lawyers before her.
Mizelle said Reyes improperly invoked her personal religious beliefs into the hearing and inappropriately used Lynch as a “physical prop” in a “rhetorical exercise” meant to embarrass the lawyer.
“This directive served no legitimate judicial purpose and transformed an attorney appearing before the court into an unwilling participant in the judge’s unnecessary demonstration,” Mizelle wrote. “Such treatment undermines the dignity of counsel and the decorum of the courtroom.”
During his first week in office, Trump signed an executive order that required service members to identify as the sex they were assigned at birth. It also banned anyone suffering from gender dysphoria from serving in the military.
“Consistent with the military mission and longstanding DoD policy, expressing a false ‘gender identity’ divergent from an individual’s sex cannot satisfy the rigorous standards necessary for military service,” the order stated.
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The hearing came as part of a lawsuit brought by a group of active-duty transgender members of the military. The plaintiffs argued to Reyes, the first openly gay federal judge in Washington, that Trump’s executive order was unconstitutional and would cost them their careers if the court did not intervene.
Reyes’s chambers did not respond to a request for comment.