The Justice Department asked U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross on Friday to step aside from a Georgia voter registration lawsuit and also moved to postpone a hearing set for Wednesday morning. The request could change who decides whether the federal government can press its case against Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger over Georgia’s unredacted voter registration data.
That is why the filing landed with immediate force. The government is trying to keep alive a lawsuit filed in January by the Trump administration, which says Raffensperger refused to turn over the records in violation of the Civil Rights Act. Ross, appointed to the federal bench in 2014 by then-President Barack Obama, was assigned the case.
In the motion, the Justice Department said Ross has been publicly identified this week in news reports as the federal judge privately reprimanded for a two-year affair with a high-ranking police officer. The filing said the conduct included sex in chambers multiple times during work hours and within earshot of staff. It also said the judge was punished for attending a political campaign event for Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and for initially lying to more senior federal judges investigating a complaint.
The department said the reported misconduct itself is “not the subject of this motion,” even as it argued the reports create “the appearance of bias.” It went further, saying there is strong evidence the reports identifying Ross as the reprimanded judge are accurate. In its view, a judge who attended a party celebrating the election of a Democrat known for prosecuting a Republican president for alleged election interference cannot preside over a case tied to that president’s effort to secure election integrity.
The friction in the filing is that the identity of the judge and the officer has not been independently confirmed by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. The clerk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia said Friday that Ross had no comment on reports tying her to the reprimand, and Ross did not respond Saturday to an inquiry about the recusal request.
On Thursday, the Atlanta Police Department said it was investigating whether the officer involved in the affair is one of its employees. That inquiry adds another layer to a case already tied to politics, personnel questions and a hearing that now may not happen on schedule.
For now, the immediate question is procedural, not personal: whether Ross stays on a case that sits at the center of a fight over Georgia’s voter rolls. If she does not recuse herself, the Wednesday hearing on Raffensperger’s dismissal request remains the next clock to watch. If she steps aside, the case could be handed to another judge before the dispute over the records is argued at all.
