DOJ Accuses Minnesota Judges of Misconduct Over Times Interviews. Here’s What Happens Next

Federal judges are supposed to speak through their rulings. That old rule of thumb is at the center of a fight that broke into the open Wednesday, when the Justice Department accused a group of Minnesota federal judges of misconduct for talking to a newspaper.

Attorney General Todd Blanche announced that the department had filed a formal complaint with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. The target: judges in the District of Minnesota who gave interviews to The New York Times about the strain the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown put on their courtroom.

To the administration, this is about judges crossing a bright ethical line and showing their hand on cases they still have to decide. To the judges and their defenders, it is an attempt to punish the courts for saying out loud what their orders already said. Both arguments deserve a fair hearing, so let’s walk through what happened, what the rules actually say and what comes next.

What the Justice Department Filed

The complaint, announced September 30, accuses the judges of violating their ethical duties by discussing immigration matters, some of them still pending, with a reporter. According to UPI, the filing argues that judges are “ethically prohibited from commenting publicly on cases pending in any court.”

Two judges are named outright. Judge Patrick Schiltz, who sat for a 90-minute on-the-record interview, and Judge John Tunheim, who was quoted by name. The department asked both to recuse themselves from cases involving the Department of Homeland Security, and it asked the appeals court to investigate other judges who spoke to the Times anonymously, UPI reported. The Minnesota Reformer reported that the Times interviewed six of the district’s seven active judges.

Blanche did not soften his language. He described the comments as “overtly political” and said they reflected “obvious bias.” At a press briefing, he challenged reporters directly. “I would posit that there’s not a single reporter in this room that has ever had an on-the-record conversation with a sitting federal judge on a case still before them,” he said, as quoted by FOX 9.

Acting Deputy Attorney General Trent McCotter went further, saying judges who “covet publicity rather than follow the rule of law” damage public confidence in an impartial bench.

What the Judges Told the Times

The Times story ran September 17 under the headline “Trump’s Minnesota Surge Threatened Democracy, Judge Warns.” It was unusual by any measure. Sitting federal judges rarely give long interviews, and even more rarely about a fight with the executive branch.

Schiltz, a former Supreme Court clerk and Notre Dame law professor appointed by President George W. Bush, said the government’s conduct “created a grave threat to the rule of law,” according to the filing as reported by FOX 9. He also described what he called the administration’s “disregard for court orders.” In one line that drew attention, he said, “The rule of law to democracy is like oxygen to a human body.”

Tunheim, appointed by President Bill Clinton, challenged the administration’s description of who was being detained. “They weren’t arresting, in my view, people who were dangerous criminals on the street,” he said, according to UPI.

Notably, the Times reported that Schiltz declined to discuss specific pending cases. That detail matters, and both sides will lean on it.

The Backstory: Operation Metro Surge

None of this makes sense without the months that came before it.

Operation Metro Surge was a large immigration enforcement push in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area that ran from December 2025 into February 2026 and led to thousands of arrests, according to Al Jazeera. The federal court in Minnesota absorbed the legal fallout. Judges there handled roughly 1,000 habeas corpus petitions from people challenging their detention and ordered release in more than 70 percent of them, the Minnesota Reformer reported.

The friction between the court and the government grew sharp. Schiltz has documented that Immigration and Customs Enforcement failed to comply with nearly 100 court orders in January alone, according to Al Jazeera. Another judge, Jeffrey Bryan, ordered the U.S. attorney in Minnesota to explain the government’s noncompliance, the Reformer reported.

So when judges spoke to the Times, they were describing a period when, in their view, their own orders were being ignored. The administration sees that same period very differently: as a lawful enforcement operation that ran into a bench it believes was hostile from the start.

Minnesota has been a political flashpoint for this administration for a while. We covered part of that story in the fraud allegations fight between the White House and Gov. Tim Walz.

What the Ethics Rules Actually Say

Here is where the debate gets specific, and where most of the heat comes from.

The Code of Conduct for United States Judges tells judges not to make public comment on the merits of a matter pending or impending in any court. That is Canon 3A(6), and it is the heart of the Justice Department’s complaint. The rule exists so that litigants, especially the government in this case, can trust that a judge has not already made up their mind.

But the same code, and the guidance that interprets it, also recognizes that judges can speak on matters concerning the law, the legal system and the administration of justice. Schiltz says he relied on exactly that. According to the Reformer, he cited a February 2026 opinion from the judiciary’s Committee on Codes of Conduct that permits judges to address “core judiciary matters such as advocacy for the rule of law.” His response to the complaint was short: “I was acting well within the ethical rules.”

The District of Minnesota backed him up, saying the judges operated within those rules and pointing to the same February guidance, FOX 9 reported.

So the legal question is narrower than the headlines suggest. Did the judges talk about the merits of pending cases, which is off limits? Or did they talk about the court’s ability to function and the government’s compliance with orders, which arguably is allowed? Reasonable lawyers can read the same interview and come out on different sides.

The Best Case for Each Side

The case for the Justice Department: Judges hold enormous power precisely because they are supposed to be neutral. When a judge tells a national newspaper that an administration’s policy threatened democracy, while that same judge is still deciding cases brought by or against that administration, a reasonable person could doubt the judge’s impartiality. Recusal rules exist for exactly this reason. The government is a litigant too, and it is entitled to a judge who has not publicly condemned its conduct. If a prosecutor gave a similar interview about a pending case, defense lawyers would rightly cry foul.

The case for the judges: Courts have no army and no budget authority. Their only real tool is public legitimacy. If an executive agency repeatedly ignores court orders, the judges argue, explaining that to the public is not bias. It is a defense of the institution. The February advisory opinion explicitly allows advocacy for the rule of law. And a misconduct complaint filed by the very party that lost many of those cases can look less like an ethics referral and more like pressure on judges who ruled against it. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison called the complaint a “desperate and dangerous attack on American judicial independence,” per FOX 9.

Both sides are, in their own way, defending the rule of law. That is what makes this fight so hard to referee.

What Happens Next

The executive branch does not get to discipline judges. Under the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act, complaints like this go to the chief judge of the circuit, here the Eighth Circuit. The chief judge can dismiss a complaint, conclude it because corrective action has been taken, or appoint a special committee of judges to investigate. Any finding then goes to the circuit’s judicial council, which is also made up of judges.

Historically, the overwhelming majority of misconduct complaints are dismissed. Most are filed by unhappy litigants and are found to be disagreements with rulings rather than true misconduct. A complaint from the Justice Department itself is far less common and will draw closer scrutiny, but the process is the same.

The recusal request is a separate track. Whether Schiltz and Tunheim step aside from DHS cases is, in the first instance, a decision for the judges themselves, and any refusal could be challenged on appeal in a specific case.

Three things to watch in the coming weeks:

• The Eighth Circuit’s first move. A quick dismissal would signal the judiciary sees no real violation. A special committee would signal the opposite.
• Recusal motions in live cases. If government lawyers start filing motions to remove these judges from specific immigration cases, the fight moves from ethics boards into actual courtrooms.
• Whether other judges speak up. Judges in other districts have faced similar compliance fights. If more of them talk publicly, the administration may treat this complaint as a template.

This is the latest chapter in a broader tug-of-war between this White House and the courts, from the White House press ban ruling to fights over voting law at the Supreme Court, including the Voting Rights Act Section 208 case.

Why It Matters to You

It is easy to treat this as an inside-baseball spat between lawyers. It is not.

Every American who ever walks into a federal courtroom, whether as a defendant, a small business suing the government or a family fighting a deportation, depends on two things at once. They need a judge who is fair, and they need a court whose orders are actually followed. This case pits those two needs against each other.

If judges cannot speak when they believe their orders are being ignored, courts may lose one of their few tools for holding power to account. If judges can freely condemn a party in the press while still hearing that party’s cases, the promise of an impartial bench gets weaker. The Eighth Circuit will have to decide where that line is. However it rules, the answer will shape how judges and presidents deal with each other long after this administration.