Atlanta Judge Risks More Recusal Bids After Judicial Reprimand

Litigants could seize on openings to ask a Georgia federal judge to take herself off certain political cases, after she was found to have improperly had an affair with a police officer in chambers and attended a political event.

US District Judge Eleanor Ross is already facing one request to step back from a case, after the Justice Department asked her to be disqualified from hearing its bid to obtain Georgia voter rolls.

The government’s request followed Bloomberg Law’s report that Ross was reprimanded for misconduct that included attending Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis’ primary election party. Willis brought charges against President Donald Trump and others for attempting to overturn his 2020 election loss.

More motions could follow seeking Ross’ recusal over the misconduct findings, legal ethics experts said. In addition to the political event attendance, she was found to have had sex in her chambers with an Atlanta Police Department commander, which could draw recusal requests on police matters.

“It does open the court to a wide range of motions to disqualify if people can connect their case and the people in it to any of the claims of violations of the code of judicial conduct,” said Laurie Levenson, a professor of legal ethics at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.

The uncertainty surrounding Ross’ recusal obligations is “very disruptive,” said Arthur Hellman, an emeritus law professor at the University of Pittsburgh who studies federal courts.

The judicial code of conduct says judges should recuse themselves from matters “in which the judge’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”

These concerns are aggravated by the judiciary’s decision not to publicly release Ross’ name in its decision finding she breached ethics rules.

“These are some difficult questions, and many of them would have been much easier if the council had officially identified the judge,” Hellman said.

DOJ Request

The Justice Department submitted a request on May 29 asking Ross to recuse herself from its lawsuit against Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, seeking a copy of Georgia’s statewide voter registration list.

The department argued that Ross’ attendance at the 2024 victory party could be reasonably understood “as an endorsement of Willis’s election and the Democratic Party.” Given Willis’ prosecution of Trump, Ross “cannot impartially decide a case in which President Trump’s Department of Justice seeks voter rolls in an effort to ensure election integrity,” the government said.

Ross on Monday postponed a scheduled hearing in that case while she considers the request. Trump has repeatedly posted on social media news reports about the recusal bid.

The Justice Department’s request “seems like a non-frivolous argument,” said Rebecca Roiphe, a New York Law School professor specializing in criminal law and ethics.

She said the department’s argument raising concerns that the judge couldn’t impartially decide the election-related issues is “more persuasive” than its claim that she endorsed the Democratic Party.

Ross’ attendance at the campaign event could prompt future recusal requests in election-related cases, including those where Willis is a party, but also those in which the district attorney is “a central figure,” Roiphe said.

“Fani Willis was so involved with Georgia and Georgia’s involvement in the 2020 election, that I think those kinds of cases might see a more serious effort to get this particular judge disqualified,” Roiphe said.

She said it’s unclear if these requests would ultimately be meritorious, and requesting recusal isn’t always the best move strategically for litigants. If the judge denies the request, the litigant would then have to proceed with the case under the judge after questioning her impartiality.

Recusal is likely appropriate in the Georgia voter rolls case, said Charles Geyh, an Indiana University judicial ethics expert, given Willis’ role in investigating Trump over the 2020 election.

Geyh said judges are prohibited from publicly supporting political candidates “because it kind of creates partisan alignments and perception problems that are exacerbated by that kind of activity, when judges are supposed to be removed from the fray.”

Police Ties

Ross’ affair with the Atlanta police commander could also put her at risk of potential conflicts in court, though it’s unlikely she would be required to recuse from all cases involving police, experts said.

It may nevertheless create enough of an appearance of a conflict to raise concerns from those suing the police department, such as in federal civil rights cases.

“If somebody is suing the department based on the actions of a police officer, I think people would certainly have doubts about the impartiality of a judge who’s been having sex with one of the officers in that department,” Hellman said.

The investigative panel found that Ross didn’t preside over any cases in which the officer or the Atlanta Police Department was a party, between January 2022 and October 2025.

Geyh said that typically, a judge doesn’t need to step back from a case every time that a relative’s law enforcement agency is involved in a matter. He said recusal would be required if that relative played a direct or meaningful role in the case.

There doesn’t appear to be formal judiciary guidance that directly addresses Ross’ situation. But one advisory opinion states that judges should recuse if their relative worked as an assistant US attorney on the case, has supervisory responsibility over an assistant US attorney handling the case, or is the US attorney.

Federal cases before former US District Judge Joshua Kindred in Alaska were revisited following his resignation in 2024, after he admitted to inappropriate relationships with two federal prosecutors.

That scandal involved the US Attorney’s Office in Anchorage, which generally litigates in federal court. The local district attorney’s office and a city police department are less likely to appear regularly in Ross’ federal courtroom.

But there are plenty of instances where local and federal law enforcement work together, Levenson said.

“The big problem is, we don’t know what we don’t know,” Levenson said.