Judicial Disqualification – Does it Matter When the Defendant is a Lawyerless Student Loan Debtor who went to a Black School?

Abstract

Under an obscure state constitutional provision a Texas county court judge who announces his intent to run for higher judicial office triggers his resignation from the current bench, whether he knows it or not.

Just having taken office in January 2019, Judge William McLeod announced in March 2019 that he will run for Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court. On April Fools Day he signed two judgments against a student loan debtor, which are now on appeal in the First Court of Appeals. That Court sits in Houston and hears appeals from Harris County and surrounding counties.

Will it matter that the trial court judge was disqualified? Will the higher court vacate the judgments as void?

Based on the track record of how the First Court of Appeals has dealt with appeals by consumer debtors, pro se litigants, and folks proceeding in forma pauperis – whether represented by pro bono counsel or not – I predict that the justices will devise a way to thwart the student loan defendant’s bid to challenge the judgment, such as by dismissing his appeal for failure to file a rule-compliant brief, or by ignoring the jurisdictional impediment because the appellate record does not speak to it.

I make my prediction before either case is disposed of. I am willing to expose myself to the possibility of being proven wrong, and I hope I will be proven wrong.

The appeals involve judgments in favor of National Collegiate Student Loan Trusts and are on the COA docket under cause numbers 01-19-00291-CV and 01-19-00297-CV. The Court has already struck the appellant’s first efforts at coming up with an appellate brief, and has removed the pro se appellant’s 2-page filing from the docket, so it cannot even serve as a warning to other lawyerless student loan defendants of how NOT to present arguments on appeal.

Keywords: pro se appeals, self-represented litigants, student loan debtors, student loan jurisprudence, jurisdiction, disqualification, appellate process

JEL Classification: K35, K41, K22, K12