How a Judge's Media Interviews Were Used to Block Stop and Frisk Reform

A trio of federal judges brought stop and frisk reform to a dead stop Thursday afternoon. In a three-page ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit not only granted a stay to the City of New York (meaning the NYPD is free to ignore the recent ruling of Judge Shira Scheindlin), it also kicked Scheindlin off the stop and frisk cases (Jaenean Ligon vs. City of New York and David Floyd v. City of New York) altogether by arguing that she "ran afoul of the code of conduct for United States Judges."

In a footnote, the Second Circuit's order explains that Scheindlin violated the code of conduct by informing a group of plaintiffs in 2007 that if they had evidence of racial profiling, they should file a lawsuit and she would take it on as a "related case" (which she did). She also apparently violated the code of conduct by giving interviews to The New Yorker, the AP, and the New York Law Journal, in which she discussed her judicial philosophy.