In an unprecedented action, a judicial ethics panel has amended an earlier decision in order to publicly reprimand Judge George Paine, Chief Justice of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Middle District of Tennessee. At issue is his controversial membership in the Belle Meade Country Club, the bulwark of privilege renowned for its
less than inclusionary practicesand almost exclusively white membership.
According to a filing made yesterday, a five-member Committee on Judicial Conduct and Disability of the Judicial Conference effectively slammed an Apr. 8 ruling by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals that absolved Paine of any perceived antebellum bias. The Sixth Circuit Court had dismissed a 2008 lawsuit brought against Paine by an unknown complainant, who alleged Paine was guilty of violating judicial conduct codes by retaining his Belle Meade membership and serving as a judge at the same time.
The committee rejected that court's rationale. In the process, it initiated the inaugural enforcement of a little-known canon of judicial conduct that prohibits judges from belonging to organizations that practice "invidious discrimination."
At the conclusion of the damning 18-page decision, the committee stops short of recommending disciplinary action against Paine. Nor does it call for his ouster. The judge's efforts to integrate the otherwise vanilla makeup of the 110-year-old good-ol'-boys club and his impending retirement at the end of this year likely render such actions moot.
"[We] note with unreserved sincerity that our decision is not intended to impugn Judge Paine’s good faith, of which there is much evidence. He tried to change the Club’s discriminatory practices by writing a letter challenging those practices and by promoting the cause of at least one African American applicant for Resident Membership," the committee states.
