Maine Supreme Judicial Court Justice Catherine Connors is pushing back against a judicial ethics committee recommendation that she be disciplined for failing to recuse herself from two recent foreclosure cases despite possible conflicts of interest.

The cases weakened protections for homeowners struggling to make mortgage payments. Before she was on the high court, Connors represented banking interests in related cases.

Maine Supreme Court Justice Catherine Connors speaks during testimony in a session at Lewiston High School on Oct. 10. Derek Davis/Portland Press Herald

Connors maintains she had no conflicts of interest and said the allegations could allow questions of recusal to be “weaponized,” according to a response filed by her attorney, James Bowie, late last month. Bowie also insists the decision about whether to sanction Connors should be left to the state supreme court, not a separate panel of judges as recommended by the ethics committee.

The Committee on Judicial Conduct last month recommended Connors be publicly reprimanded, the lowest level sanction.

The committee cited statements Connors made during her 2020 confirmation hearing that she would “err on the side of recusal” in foreclosure appeal cases as evidence that she should have recused. The committee requested that her reprimand include language stating that judicial candidates “are to be candid at confirmation hearings” and that “representations by them at those hearings are to be honored.”

The next steps are uncharted territory in Maine.

The complaint against Connors, filed in January 2024 by Yarmouth foreclosure attorney Thomas A. Cox, is the first complaint concerning a state supreme court justice to be forwarded from the committee to the court, let alone to receive a recommendation for discipline.

In Maine, it’s up to the Supreme Judicial Court to decide the outcome of judicial disciplinary cases, but the committee also recommended the case be considered by either a panel of Maine Superior Court judges or out-of-state judges, rather than by Connors’ peers on the state supreme court.

Connors, however, believes the case should be heard by her colleagues.

“The committee seeks not only a reprimand in this matter, but also direction from the Court as to what is required of judicial candidates at confirmation hearings. These novel and important questions of policy that will provide guidance to judicial officers serving throughout the state must be addressed by the Maine Supreme Judicial Court,” Bowie wrote in the response. “Those issues should not be delegated, particularly in the absence of any statutory or rule-based authority for doing so, to some other ad hoc grouping of inferior judicial officers, and certainly not to an ad hoc committee of judicial officers from jurisdictions other than Maine.”

In the two foreclosure cases in question — Finch v. U.S. Bank, N.A. and J.P. Morgan Chase Acquisition Corp. v. Camille J. Moulton — the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled 4-3 in favor of banks, with Connors in the majority.

The cases overturned precedent established in a series of 2017 cases — Pushard v. Bank of America and Federal National Mortgage Association v. Deschaine — that protected homeowners by deeming mortgages unenforceable if lenders failed to meet the requirements for notices of default.

Connors, a former attorney, filed an amicus brief on behalf of the Maine Bankers Association in the Deschaine case and represented Bank of America in the Purshard case.

After hearing the oral arguments of the Finch appeal, Connors reached out to the Advisory Committee on Judicial Ethics and asked if she should recuse herself from the Finch and Moulton cases. The ethics committee said she did not have to because she did not represent the plaintiffs in either case.

In the response, Connors’ attorney argued that classifying her history of representing banking interests as a conflict of interest “runs the risk that litigants will seek to weaponize recusal by using judge’s prior legal advocacy as a base for disqualification.”

It also, Bowie said, defeats the purpose of nominating judges based on their experience or expertise.

“It would be anomalous for such experience to qualify a person to be on the bench and then at the same time disqualify the person from hearing such issues as a judge,” he said.