SEATTLE (CN) — The Seattle City Attorney’s Office is facing a lawsuit in which voters and a coalition of community groups accuse it of abusing prosecutorial discretion for “effectively removing” an elected judge from the bench earlier this year over claims of biased rulings.
Former public defender Pooja Vaddadi started her four-year term on the Seattle Municipal Court in early 2023 after winning a contested election with 61% of the vote. One year later, the City Attorney’s Office set forth a policy to disqualify her from hearing criminal cases.
Now, the office has been sued by a coalition of community groups and three Seattle voters who argue that the policy violates the mandate of prosecutorial discretion, they say in a complaint filed in King County Superior Court on Monday by their attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington.
“The people of Seattle elected Judge Vaddadi, and another elected official is undermining the democratic will of Seattle voters by preventing Judge Vaddadi from doing her job,” La Rond Baker, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, said in a statement.
In March, the City Attorney’s Office announced that it would file an affidavit of prejudice on Vaddadi in all criminal cases, citing a “regular pattern of biased rulings” from the judge and input from attorneys in her courtroom that her decisions demonstrate a “complete lack of understanding, or perhaps even intentional disregard, of the evidence rules, even on basic issues.”
The Washington Community Alliance, a nonprofit seeking to advance diversity in elected positions, and three individual Seattle voters, including one who campaigned for Vaddadi, took issue with the directive and filed the lawsuit seeking an injunction to block the office and Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison from enforcing the policy against Vaddadi or any other municipal judges.
The plaintiffs say the affidavit policy “thwarted the will of the voters who elected Judge Vaddadi, leaving voters with no recourse absent bringing this lawsuit.”
The Seattle Municipal Court handles primarily misdemeanor criminal cases and is overseen by seven elected judges. The Seattle City Attorney holds the sole authority to prosecute misdemeanor crimes in the court.
The plaintiffs accuse the Seattle City Attorney’s Office of stripping city prosecutors of their ability to exercise independent judgment by mandating that they file an “affidavit for disqualification of judge” against Vaddadi in all criminal cases, leaving the judge to hear only civil infractions.
The plaintiffs also accuse the office of further removing judicial power from Vaddadi by filing an affidavit of prejudice to remove her from presiding over one particular civil infraction: a $5,000 second-degree negligent driving traffic citation issued to Kevin Dave, the Seattle police officer who drove 74 miles per hour in a 25 mile per hour zone and fatally struck 23-year-old student Jaahnavi Kandula while she was crossing the street in a crosswalk.
“The Seattle City Attorney’s use of a blanket policy against Judge Vaddadi is an abuse of prosecutorial discretion, expanding what is intended to be a case-specific tool into a mandatory policy, effectively usurping the will of the voters,” Baker said.
In a statement, City Attorney’s Office spokesperson Tim Robinson said the office is “reviewing the complaint and will respond to it in accordance with the schedule established by the court.”
Robinson also noted that the Seattle Municipal Court presiding judge ruled that affidavits of prejudice can only be filed on a per-case basis rather than a “blanket” policy.
Vaddadi declined to make a statement at this time, but referred to a column she published over the summer in Seattle’s alternative newspaper The Stranger. In the piece, Vaddadi denied the accusations lobbed against her in the memorandum distributed by the City Attorney’s Office.
“No amount of inconvenience or venom directed at me will interfere with my commitment to judicial independence and to enforcing the highest standards of ethical behavior in my courtroom,” Vaddadi wrote.
She further accused the City Attorney’s Office of fabricating cases to support its argument against her. She also wrote that the “scathing memorandum” was issued a few weeks after she disqualified a prosecuting attorney from a trial due to a “potential eithics and evidentiary issue.”
“If prosecutors can effectively nullify a sitting judge this way, we do not have real elections,” Vaddadi wrote, noting she was writing in her personal capacity.
Natalie Walton-Anderson, City Attorney’s Office’s criminal division chief, wrote in the memo that she respects the members of the Seattle Municipal Court bench, but said judges have “a responsibility to set aside their personal feelings and follow the law.”