| THE QUICK ANSWER
In June 2026, the Texas State Commission on Judicial Conduct publicly reprimanded Loving County Justice of the Peace Amber King. The Commission found that she jailed four people who had answered a jury summons (holding them in contempt as non-residents, with no notice and no hearing) and that she deleted county records after a request to preserve evidence. |
| CASE FILE AT A GLANCE | |
| Judge | Hon. Amber King, Justice of the Peace |
| Court | Justice of the Peace, Mentone |
| County | Loving County, Texas |
| CJC Numbers | 22-1490, 22-1533, 22-1547 & 22-1616 |
| Sanction | Public Reprimand |
| Date Issued | June 2026 |
| Signed By | Gary Steel, Chair, State Commission on Judicial Conduct |
Four people answered a jury summons in Loving County (the least-populated county in the continental United States) and ended up in a jail two counties over. Not because of anything they did in the courtroom, but because the justice of the peace had decided they did not really live where they said they lived. On the strength of that belief, she held them in contempt and had them arrested on the spot, with no notice and no hearing. In June 2026, after the dust and the litigation settled, the Texas State Commission on Judicial Conduct publicly reprimanded Justice of the Peace Amber King for it.
A public reprimand is the most serious of the Commission’s three standard public sanctions. It is a step beyond the warnings and admonitions this series has covered. It is reserved for conduct the Commission considers a serious breach. Reading this order, it is not hard to see why.
What Happened
On May 25, 2022, four people appeared in response to a jury summons. No particular case was called; Judge King simply began qualifying the panel. She warned the group that anyone who was not a qualified juror could leave but that staying could expose them to an aggravated-perjury referral and a contempt finding. She then asked each person whether they wanted to go. After swearing in the panel, she announced that several of those present were not, in her view, residents of the county; that they had been given a chance to leave and had not; and that they would therefore be held in contempt and sent to jail for obstructing the administration of justice and showing disrespect to the court.
She named four of them, had them arrested, and had them transported to the Winkler County Detention Center. None of the four received notice or a hearing before being jailed. The written contempt orders she signed said the four had “refused to comply with this court’s order” but they did not identify any court order the four had actually violated. Later the same day, she modified the orders only to add that the four would be held until 5:00 p.m. Three of them quickly sought relief, and the Loving County Court granted a writ of mandamus, finding that King had “clearly abused her discretion and failed to comply with due process,” and the contempt orders were vacated.
These Were Not Random Jurors
What turns a startling courtroom episode into a discipline case is the context the Commission documented. The four were not strangers who happened to draw a summons. According to sworn depositions taken later (in an election-contest lawsuit King herself joined after losing her 2022 race) the four were her political adversaries. Before the arrests, King and the county sheriff had pushed one of them, a member of the county appraisal board, to resign over the same residency theory. In her own deposition, King acknowledged that she had jailed the four without regard for due process and without evidence, that she had acted on nothing more than her “personal knowledge,” and that she had applied a personal (not legal) definition of residency to decide they had committed perjury.
In her response to the Commission, King pushed back on the framing. She said the arrests were not premeditated and were meant only to protect the integrity of the court from jurors she believed had perjured themselves; that a deposition statement suggesting she planned the arrests in advance was taken out of context; and that there was no coordinated campaign against anyone. Notably, she also conceded that the contempt orders were incorrect because no court order had been violated, and that the better course would have been simply to excuse the four from jury service.
Why the Arrests Were Unlawful
Judges do have a contempt power, and it can be exercised summarily (on the spot, without a full hearing) in narrow circumstances. But “direct” or summary contempt is not a blank check. As the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals explained in Ex parte Knable, the authority to punish contempt immediately flows from a judge observing the conduct and from the exigency of the moment which is a genuine need to act at once to quell disruption, violence, or abuse in the courtroom. Where a person could be given due-process protections without disrupting the proceeding, the Fourteenth Amendment requires that they be given those protections.
A dispute about whether someone truly resides in the county is the opposite of an exigency. There was no disruption to quell, no emergency that made notice and a hearing impossible. The four could have been told the accusation, given a chance to respond, and (if it came to that) referred for perjury through ordinary process. Instead they were jailed first. The Commission found that King failed to comply with and maintain competence in the law, performed her duties with bias and prejudice and manifested it by word and conduct, and denied the four the right to be heard that every person with a legal interest in a proceeding is owed under Canon 3B(8) which is a right rooted in the due-course-of-law guarantee of the Texas Constitution and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
| KNOW YOUR RIGHTS: CONTEMPT AND DUE PROCESS
A judge’s contempt power is real but bounded. “Direct” (summary) contempt is punishment on the spot, without a hearing. It is reserved for a genuine emergency: a need to act at once to quell disruption in the courtroom. Where notice and a hearing can be given without disrupting the proceeding, the Fourteenth Amendment requires them. You cannot be jailed over a dispute like residency without first being told the accusation and given a chance to respond. |
And Then the Emails Disappeared
There is one more finding worth noting. After King received a request to preserve evidence, she deleted information from her county computer and email. Her explanation to the Commission was that she believed the material was going to be deleted anyway because her term was ending, that she had forwarded the important items to herself to preserve them, and that what she deleted was inconsequential. The Commission included the deletion among the conduct supporting the reprimand. The lesson is plain enough: a preservation request is not a suggestion and deciding for yourself which of the requested materials are “inconsequential” is not how preservation works.
The Rules She Broke
The Commission concluded that King’s conduct violated several provisions of the Texas Code of Judicial Conduct, together with the Texas Constitution:
| Rule | What It Requires |
| Canon 2A | A judge shall comply with the law. |
| Canon 3B(2) | A judge shall maintain professional competence in the law. |
| Canon 3B(5) | A judge shall perform judicial duties without bias or prejudice. |
| Canon 3B(6) | A judge shall not, by words or conduct, manifest bias or prejudice. |
| Canon 3B(8) | A judge shall accord every person with a legal interest in a proceeding the right to be heard. |
| Tex. Const. Art. V, § 1-a(6)A | A judge shall not engage in willful and persistent conduct that is clearly inconsistent with the proper performance of judicial duties or that casts public discredit on the judiciary. |
Why This Matters
Strip away the small-county intrigue and a basic protection is at the center of this case: you cannot be jailed without notice and a chance to be heard, except in the rare emergency that genuinely leaves a judge no time. The contempt power is real, but it has boundaries because a judge holds the keys to the jail and sits in judgment of the same dispute. When a judge uses that power against people she views as political opponents, on a definition of the law she made up, the safeguard collapses into exactly the kind of arbitrary detention due process exists to prevent.
The damage outlasted the four arrests. National coverage followed, and the county attorney reported that summoned residents began writing in to say they were afraid to appear to the point that a grand jury could not be seated. That is the quiet cost of this kind of conduct: it does not just harm the people in the cells. It teaches everyone watching that answering a summons might be dangerous, and that is corrosive to the whole system.
How It Played in the Press
This was a national story long before the reprimand. When King jailed the four prospective jurors in 2022, the episode drew coverage well beyond Texas, anchored by a New York Times feature, “Big Trouble in Little Loving County,” that laid out the arrests and their fallout in the least-populated county in the country. As the Commission’s order notes, the reporting also captured a real-world consequence. The county attorney said summoned residents had begun writing in to say they were afraid to appear, and a grand jury could not be seated. The 2026 reprimand brought a second wave of coverage, including from the legal-trade outlet Law360, which framed the sanction around the political feud that drove the arrests.
The Lawsuits and Why a Reprimand Still Matters
The reprimand was not the only fallout. Three of the four jailed jurors sued King in federal court, along with the county sheriff and constable, claiming the arrests were political retaliation that violated their civil rights. A federal district court let the core claim against King go forward, ruling that she was not entitled to judicial immunity for what she did at the jury proceeding. In August 2025, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed. It held that presiding over the qualification of a jury panel is a judicial act, and that judicial immunity shields a judge from a damages suit over a judicial act even when the judge is accused of abusing it. One judge dissented, calling the episode a textbook case of political “lawfare” and arguing that qualifying jurors is an administrative task that should not carry immunity. The jurors have asked the United States Supreme Court to take the case, and as of early 2026 that petition was still pending.
At first glance that looks like a contradiction. A federal court says King cannot be sued for the arrests, while the State Commission on Judicial Conduct publicly reprimands her for the same conduct. How can both be true?
They are both true because they answer different questions. Judicial immunity is not a finding that a judge did nothing wrong. It is a rule that says the remedy for a wrong committed from the bench is an appeal or judicial discipline, not a lawsuit for money against the judge personally. The doctrine exists so judges can rule without fear of being sued by every losing party, and it is deliberately broad. But it comes with a trade. Because immunity closes the courthouse door to damages, the accountability has to come from somewhere else, and that somewhere is the discipline system. The Fifth Circuit’s immunity ruling and the Commission’s reprimand are two halves of the same design. Immunity from suit is not immunity from consequences, and the reprimand is the consequence the law still allows.
We’ll update this section if the US Supreme Court takes up the appeal.
Where Is She Now?
Amber King is no longer the Loving County justice of the peace. The 2022 race that set this whole episode in motion ended in a tie, 39 votes to 39, between King and Angela Medlin. The seat went to Medlin, who is listed today as the county’s justice of the peace. King and two others contested the result, arguing that illegal votes had been counted, but the challenge failed at every level, and the Texas Supreme Court declined to hear it in early 2025, closing the matter. By the time the Commission issued its reprimand in June 2026, King was already off the bench, and the order rests on conduct from her time in office. A public reprimand is permanent and public. It would be part of the record if she ever sought judicial office again. If that changes, the Gavel of Shame will follow up.
| Jailed or Held in Contempt Without a Fair Hearing?
Contempt findings, summary detention, and denials of the right to be heard can be challenged. Deandra Grant Law handles federal and state criminal defense across Texas. Call (214) 225-7117 • texasdwisite.com |
The Gavel of Shame • Case File No. 21
By Deandra Grant • Deandra Grant Law • Published June 2026
Sources
Primary source
- Texas State Commission on Judicial Conduct, Public Reprimand of the Honorable Amber King, CJC Nos. 22-1490, 22-1533, 22-1547 & 22-1616 (June 2026). texas.gov
News coverage
- Law360 (June 12, 2026), “Texas Judge Reprimanded For Jailing Jurors Amid Feud.” com
- The New York Times (David J. Goodman, Aug. 2, 2022), “Big Trouble in Little Loving County, Texas.” com
- Medlin v. King, No. 24-0887 (Tex.), review denied Jan. 31, 2025 — Loving County justice-of-the-peace election contest (2022 tie resolved for Angela Medlin). com
- Jones v. King, No. 23-50850 (5th Cir. Aug. 1, 2025) — Fifth Circuit opinion on judicial immunity for the Loving County jury arrests; cert. petition pending, No. 25-658 (U.S.). uscourts.gov
This post summarizes the findings of a public sanction issued by the Texas State Commission on Judicial Conduct. All quotations and findings are drawn from that public order. Judge King disputed the Commission’s framing in her written response. This is general commentary on a public record, not legal advice.
