Judicial Panel Dismisses Disciplinary Complaint Against Maine Justice Catherine Connors

On Thursday, February 26, 2026, Maine Public reported that a disciplinary case against a member of Maine’s Supreme Judicial Court was dismissed by a panel of judges. The central issue revolved around whether Associate Justice Catherine Connors violated judicial ethics by not recusing herself from two mortgage foreclosure appeals presented before the state’s highest court.

Justice Connors’s professional background includes several decades as an attorney representing banks, banking interests, and other clients at a major Maine law firm. Before her appointment to the court in 2020, she authored legal briefs for banking interests in two separate mortgage cases brought before the Maine Supreme Judicial Court in 2017.

In 2024, the state’s Committee on Judicial Conduct determined that Connors violated the judicial code of ethics when she did not recuse herself from two subsequent cases dealing with similar issues. The committee raised concerns that her impartiality as a judge “might reasonably be questioned” due to her prior work.

The special five-judge panel, however, dismissed the complaint. Three of the judges, including District Court Judge Charles Dow, Superior Court Justice Ann Murray, and active retired Superior Court Justice William Stokes, stated that Maine law does not mandate recusal in cases involving legal issues previously litigated by a judge.

They noted a “similarity between the legal issues” in the four cases but emphasized that recusal is not required unless the representation is on the same “matter in controversy,” or involves prior legal issues. The judges added that a well-informed person should not necessarily question a judge’s impartiality based on these grounds.

The judges also noted that Connors sought guidance from the Judicial Ethics Advisory Committee, which advised that recusal was not necessary.

While the five-judge panel’s decision was not unanimous, two other judges, active retired District Court Judge Barbara Raimondi and active retired District Court Judge Patricia Worth, concurred with the dismissal. However, they wrote in their concurring opinion that there was “a preponderance of the evidence” that Connors violated the rule requiring recusals whenever impartiality “might reasonably be questioned,” emphasizing the word “might.”

Raimondi and Worth pointed out that during her judicial confirmation hearing in 2020, Connors stated she would “defer on the side of recusal” whenever there was “any doubt” about her impartiality. They stated, “A reasonable observer might question whether Justice Connors was biased in favor of banking interests because of her previous advocacy.” Despite this, the two judges did not believe the violation warranted formal disciplinary action.

Connors’ attorney, James Bowie, expressed gratitude that the panel agreed the report should be dismissed. He stated, “We agree, as the majority found, that the courts throughout the country have unanimously held that no recusal is appropriate under circumstances such as those faced by Justice Connors.”

This case marked the first instance of a special review panel convening to address a report against a sitting justice on the Supreme Judicial Court. Previously, the court’s justices handled such cases internally. A new rule adopted last year now requires these cases to be reviewed by a five-judge panel comprising jurists from superior and district courts.