By: Mark Glennon*

There’s something uniquely pleasing in just the caption of a lawsuit filed Wednesday by Judge James R. Brown. It’s that Illinois Supreme Court justices are named personally as defendants.

Brown, as we wrote earlier this month, was politically assassinated. The retired Illinois judge had been temporarily reinstated last year to fill a vacancy on the bench. But when two left wing organizations complained this year about a column he had written while retired, the Illinois Supreme Court unceremoniously rescinded his reinstatement. Brown’s column was fully within his First Amendment rights and it was, in many ways, unremarkable. It condemned recent examples of “lawfare” — misuse of the courts for political and social goals — and celebrated how the misuse is being rolled back.

But Brown’s lawfare column was about abuse of legal process by the left against the right, which triggers the left’s cancel mob. What tool did the mob proceed to use? Lawfare, ironically.

The two left wing organizations wrote to the Illinois Supreme Court demanding his termination. The top Illinois judges obliged. The Democratic-controlled court threw Brown off the bench on Jan. 26 in a one-sentence order. Brown was accorded no hearing, notice or chance for rebuttal of any kind. That added procedural due process violations to the free speech infractions the court was making. See our earlier column for more background.

Brown has now sued in federal court alleging those constitutional violations. The defendants are the justices. That’s appropriate because it was they who lowered the axe on Brown. Brown’s complaint is specific about why the justices should not be immune.  To be protected from personal liability by judicial immunity, judges must have acted within their judicial capacity, the complaint says. But in this case, it says, “The individual Defendant Illinois Supreme Court justices acted outside their judicial capacity by unilaterally removing Judge Brown from the Cook County Circuit.” The Illinois Constitution strictly limits how sitting judges may be removed—only through impeachment or after notice and a public hearing by the Illinois Courts Commission.

Details on the lawsuit are provided here by the Liberty Justice Center, which is representing Brown. The complaint requests the federal court to issue injunctions that would reinstate brown and to award monetary damages.

Make no mistake about what happened here: Justices on lllinois’ top court ran a Star Chamber. They personally comprised a cancel mob and acted in blatant disregard of constitutional rights to due process and free speech. We can only hope they lose the lawsuit with maximum humiliation.

*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints.