Judge Steven Brister Admonished Over a Baseball Cap

What Happened at the Conference

The annual Municipal Division Conference ran June 9 and 10, 2025 at a hotel in Bergen County, in furtherance of the Administrative Office of the Courts judicial education program. The complaint puts attendance at more than 400 people: municipal judges, municipal division managers and assistant managers from every vicinage, and staff of the AOC’s Municipal Court Services Division. It is a professional training event for judges and court staff, not a public proceeding. There is no dress code for it.

On June 9 he arrived wearing a black baseball cap with the flag of Palestine embroidered on the front and the word Palestine embroidered alongside it, and a black and white checkered keffiyeh draped around his neck and shoulders.

After the morning plenary, the acting municipal presiding judge for his vicinage, to whom he reports, told him complaints had come in, that some attendees were offended, and that a request had been made for him to remove the cap. He said he would not remove it unless an announcement was made requiring all attendees to remove their headgear. No announcement was made. He wore the cap for the rest of the day.

Later that day, by phone and text, he explained the cap as practical: it was raining, he wanted something with a brim, and it was the first one on his cap shelf. He said he wore the keffiyeh in case he got cold. When the Committee’s staff interviewed him under oath on October 24, 2025, he said he wore the cap because it matched his outfit and that he did not view either item as a political statement. On the keffiyeh he said he owns many, that this was the one that matched that day, and that “for me personally, I wear it for the spiritual and religious reasons.”

Three Charges

The formal complaint charged three rules on two theories. The attire itself was charged as prohibited political activity under Canon 7, Rule 7(A). The refusal to remove the cap was charged as insubordination, violating Canon 1, Rule 1.1, which requires judges to observe high standards so the integrity and independence of the judiciary may be preserved, and Canon 2, Rule 2.1, which requires avoiding impropriety and its appearance.

He denied all three and asked for dismissal with prejudice. Then, roughly six months after answering, he submitted an affidavit consenting to discipline. What he admitted in it is specific: that his choice of attire may have displayed an insensitivity to some attendees, that given his position and the nature of the event it was of paramount importance that the integrity and independence of the judiciary be upheld, and that his failure to recognize the potential impact of his attire fell short of the standards of his office. He admitted Canon 1, Rule 1.1, and requested a public admonition.

It is not an admission of political activity, and it is not an admission of insubordination. The complaint’s Rule 1.1 theory was refusing a superior’s request. His admitted Rule 1.1 violation was failing to anticipate how his clothing would be received. Same rule, different conduct.

The Court accepted the affidavit, found the admitted violation of Canon 1, Rule 1.1, and exercised its discretion to dismiss the remaining charges.

The Factual Fight Underneath It

He contends the internal report that set the case in motion said his cap read Free Palestine. The cap did not. The word on it was Palestine, next to the flag, and the Committee’s own complaint describes it that way. He asserts that a presiding judge from another vicinage, who he says was also the conference vice chairperson, reported the cap incorrectly, and that his own presiding judge, on approaching him, observed that the cap did not carry the reported words, said she was only the messenger, and left the decision to him. He says she never directed him to remove it, which is the foundation of his insubordination defense.

He also says the error reached print, and points to a June 12, 2025 New Jersey Law Journal piece. Its headline, as it stands today, is Judge Wears ‘Palestine’ Hat to Court Training Session, without the word Free. The article is paywalled and we were not able to read the body, so whether its text ever said otherwise, or whether a headline was changed after publication, is not something we can establish. What his answer describes is commentary in the piece calling the cap a dog whistle and likening the keffiyeh to a swastika, and, in the same article, the New Jersey Muslim Lawyers Association rejecting that characterization and saying neither item was a political statement.

None of this was adjudicated. The Committee’s complaint does not allege the cap said anything other than Palestine, and the consent disposition means no hearing was ever held on who said what to whom. The dispute is in the record as his sworn account, and it is worth knowing it is there, because the published version of this story and the charged version are not the same document.

Religious, Cultural, Political, or All Three

The Committee’s position was narrow and conditional: that wearing a hat with the flag of Palestine and the word Palestine, particularly combined with the keffiyeh, may reasonably have been interpreted by those in attendance and by the broader public as a political statement in support of Palestine in the ongoing conflict in the region at the time. That is a claim about how a reasonable observer could read the attire, not a claim about what he meant.

His position was that he is an observant Muslim; that he frequently wears traditional Muslim attire off the bench and has worn a keffiyeh and thobe to prior annual conferences without incident; that he has attended since 2017 and always wore at least one article of Muslim attire; that other Muslim judges frequently ask him to lead prayer at the conference; that other attendees wore religious head coverings including yarmulkes without being asked to remove them; and, pointedly, that he deliberately wears no religious attire on the bench so litigants will not doubt his impartiality. He framed the request as viewpoint discrimination and said a keffiyeh is to a Muslim what a tallit or sudra is to an observant Jew.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations of New Jersey submitted a letter to the Committee in November 2025 arguing the attire was religious and conscientious expression rather than political activity, citing the Sunnah on head coverings and shawls, describing Palestine as a geographic and spiritual term naming a land sacred to Islam, Christianity and Judaism, and warning that treating Muslim symbols as inherently political while treating other faiths’ symbols as devotional would risk unequal treatment.

Against that, the record contains his own explanations to his presiding judge and under oath, which were about rain, warmth, and a cap that matched his outfit and happened to be first on the shelf. He also acknowledged telling nobody on June 9 that his refusal had anything to do with religion. His answer reconciles this by saying a person can have more than one reason for an article of clothing. The Committee’s complaint lays the explanations side by side and lets the tension speak. The Court resolved none of it.

His Defenses

Because the case ended by consent, his answer is the only full statement of the legal argument, and for a Texas reader it is the most transferable part of the file. He raised the First Amendment on speech, expression and free exercise, and argued the restriction was neither narrowly tailored nor supported by an articulated compelling interest.

Two of his arguments are structural and worth noting whatever one makes of the rest. First, he argued that attending a judicial education session is not the performance of official duties in the way presiding over a courtroom is, so a judge’s expression there carries more constitutional protection. Second, he argued that because the conference was a closed training for peers and staff, there was no litigant to be prejudiced and no case in which public confidence could be shaken.

He also walked Canon 7(A) subsection by subsection. The rule prohibits holding office in a political organization, making speeches for a political organization or candidate or publicly endorsing a candidate, attending political functions likely to be considered political in nature, and soliciting or contributing funds to a political organization or candidate. He said he did none of those four things. The Court’s dismissal of the Canon 7 charge does not tell us whether that argument persuaded it, but the charge is gone either way.

His proposed alternative to discipline is in the answer too: that rather than punishing him, the judiciary treat the episode as a teachable moment and provide more specific training on religion so that different faiths are better understood.

Not His First Discipline

Neither the complaint nor the Court’s order mentions it, but this is his second public discipline, and the first was considerably more serious.

In September 2021 the Supreme Court of New Jersey suspended him for one month without pay over remarks he made from the bench to a defendant in a domestic violence case. Reporting at the time quoted him telling the defendant to treat women “as if you’re holding a feather,” in a passage that also described men as being in control, and he made related remarks about creation and about boxing. The Committee concluded the religious framing was out of place in a courtroom, and the discipline rested on the rules requiring judges to avoid bias and the appearance of bias.

He admitted those violations as well, calling the comments well meaning but undeniably misguided. The pattern across both matters is the same: a charged complaint, a denial, then an admission and a consent disposition. In 2021 that produced a suspension. In 2026 it produced the lightest public sanction the Court imposes.

How It Would Work in Texas

The political activity charge could not exist here

New Jersey Canon 7, Rule 7(A) opens with a flat prohibition: a judge shall not engage in any political activity. Texas does the opposite. Texas judges run for office in partisan primaries and general elections with a party label beside their names, so Texas regulates particular conduct rather than banning political activity outright. Canon 5 of the Texas Code of Judicial Conduct governs campaign conduct, endorsements and issue commitments, and Case File No. 41 covers that machinery in detail.

The practical consequence is that the most serious charge in this case has no Texas counterpart in that form. A Texas judge who attended a judicial education conference in a cap expressing a political view would not be violating a ban on political activity, because there is no such ban. The exposure would run through Canon 2A on public confidence and Canon 4A(1), which requires that extra-judicial activities not cast reasonable doubt on the judge’s capacity to act impartially.

The bias canon has a limit worth knowing

Texas Canon 3B(6) prohibits a judge from manifesting bias or prejudice by words or conduct, and it expressly names religion and national origin among the protected categories. But it applies only in the performance of judicial duties. That phrase is precisely what Brister’s second structural defense was aimed at. A training conference for judges and staff is not the performance of judicial duties, so in Texas that canon probably would not reach conference attire at all, in either direction.

And Texas gives a judge a statute New Jersey does not

The Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act, Chapter 110 of the Civil Practice and Remedies Code, provides that a government agency may not substantially burden a person’s free exercise of religion unless the burden furthers a compelling governmental interest by the least restrictive means. Two features of the statute matter here.

First, section 110.001 defines free exercise as an act or refusal to act substantially motivated by sincere religious belief, and states expressly that it is not necessary to determine that the act is motivated by a central part or central requirement of the belief. The question that dominated this New Jersey dispute, whether a keffiyeh is really required by Islam or is merely cultural, is removed by the Texas statute’s own terms.

Second, the statute’s definition of government agency reaches any agency of the state including a commission, and section 110.004 permits the violation to be asserted as a defense in a judicial or administrative proceeding. On its face that would let a Texas judge raise the Act as a defense inside a State Commission on Judicial Conduct proceeding over religious attire. Whether the Commission is a government agency for this purpose, and whether a public sanction is a substantial burden, are untested questions, and nothing in this file predicts the answers. It is simply an argument a Texas judge would have available and a New Jersey judge did not.

How It Played in the Press

The story broke two days after the conference, in the New Jersey Law Journal on June 12, 2025, and ran in two waves. The first, in June 2025, carried the charge: Bloomberg Law, the New Jersey Monitor, the New Jersey Globe, NJ.com and New Jersey talk radio, with the Council on American-Islamic Relations of New Jersey issuing a release condemning the complaint. The second wave, in late October 2026, carried the sanction, led by the New Jersey Globe and Bloomberg Law. Both waves put the cap in the headline.

The wider problem is the gap between the coverage and the order. Nearly every headline across both waves says a judge was charged, and then punished, for wearing a Palestine hat. The order does not say that. The political activity charge was dismissed, and the violation he admitted was failing to foresee how his clothing would be received. The New Jersey Globe’s October story did report the dismissal, and quoted the line from his affidavit that is the actual holding in his own words: Regardless of intent, better choices could have and should have been made. A reader who stopped at a headline would not know the Court declined to decide the question everyone was arguing about.

Where Things Stand

He remains on the bench. The admonition is final, the political activity charge is dismissed, and the record contains a sworn answer asserting that the complaint which set the case in motion misreported what his cap said.

What the case leaves behind is a narrow holding and a wide impression, and those are not the same thing. The impression is that a judge was disciplined for wearing a Palestinian flag. The holding is that a judge conceded he should have foreseen that his clothing would offend colleagues at a professional conference, and accepted the lightest public sanction his state’s highest court gives.

Sources

Primary sources

• Supreme Court of New Jersey, Order, In the Matter of Steven Brister, a Judge of the Municipal Court, D-33 September Term 2026, No. 092714, filed October 28, 2026, with respondent’s consent affidavit attached. njcourts.gov
• Advisory Committee on Judicial Conduct, Formal Complaint, In the Matter of Steven Brister, Docket No. ACJC 2025-491, dated March 2, 2026. njcourts.gov
• Respondent’s Formal Answer, ACJC No. 2025-491, filed April 23, 2026, with the November 10, 2025 letter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, New Jersey attached as Exhibit A. njcourts.gov

News coverage

• Judge Wears ‘Palestine’ Hat to Court Training Session, New Jersey Law Journal (June 12, 2025), the first report of the episode. Paywalled and robots-restricted; the headline is quoted as it appears in public search listings and the body was not read. law.com
• NJ Judge Punished for Wearing Palestine Flag Ball Cap to Event, Bloomberg Law (October 2026), on the admonition. news.bloomberglaw.com
• N.J. Supreme Court admonishes judge who wore Palestine hat to judicial conference, New Jersey Globe (October 28, 2026). newjerseyglobe.com
• Judge charged with violating political ethics rules by wearing Palestine hat to conference, New Jersey Globe. newjerseyglobe.com
• NJ judge’s keffiyeh and Palestine hat land him ethics charges, Bloomberg Law. news.bloomberglaw.com
• Judge faces discipline for wearing hat with Palestine flag, New Jersey Monitor. newjerseymonitor.com
• Municipal court judge suspended for one month over gender bias remark in domestic abuse case, New Jersey Globe (September 17, 2021). newjerseyglobe.com
• CAIR-NJ statement on the ethics complaint. cair.com

Texas reference

• Texas Code of Judicial Conduct, Canons 2A, 3B(6), 4A(1) and 5. txcourts.gov
• Tex. Civ. Prac. and Rem. Code ch. 110, the Texas Religious Freedom Restoration Act. law.z6s.net
• What the State Commission on Judicial Conduct can and cannot do. texasdwisite.com

This post summarizes a public order of the Supreme Court of New Jersey and the public pleadings in the underlying disciplinary matter. The order rests on a violation the judge admitted by consent affidavit; the Court made no findings of fact, dismissed the remaining charges including the political activity charge, and did not decide whether the judge’s attire was religious, cultural or political expression. The factual assertions in the judge’s answer, including his account of what the original complaint reported and what his presiding judge told him, are his sworn allegations and were never adjudicated. The presiding judges, court staff, conference attendees and complainants are referred to here only by role, and no one other than the judge is the subject of any finding. This publication takes no position on the conflict referenced in the record, on the religious or political character of any garment, or on the merits of the charges that were dismissed. This is general commentary on a public record, not legal advice.