Judge Demetria Brue Faces Nine Months Over a $23 Rental

One Hour on a Bicycle

On August 20, 2019, during a judicial conference on Mackinac Island, Judge Brue rented two bicycles, for herself and for Judge Debra Nance of the 46th District Court in Southfield. The shop rented by the hour. They set off at 5:56 p.m. and returned at about 6:55 p.m. When they came back they said one of the bikes had not operated properly and they did not want to pay full price.

Two employees test rode the bicycle and found nothing wrong, concluding the rider had been in the wrong gear. The owner came out, said there was no mechanical problem, and offered a discount anyway, which the judges did not accept. The dispute moved to the shop’s computer, because the owner needed to find the rental to adjust it, and he could not locate it under her surname. The card she had used read Ms. Demetria A. Brue, with a middle initial she says is not hers, and the shop’s software had filled its fields from the card swipe.

The two of them ended up in a tussle over the paper ticket at the counter. Police came. Judge Brue told the responding officers that the owner had assaulted her. Seven days later the owner filed a complaint with the Judicial Tenure Commission.

Four years of litigation followed, over an hour’s rental priced at about twenty three dollars.

The Three Counts

The first amended complaint, filed in June 2023, charged three things.

Count One alleged she made false statements during the incident itself, specifically that she told the responding officers the owner had assaulted her when he had not. Count Two alleged she made false statements to the Commission: it rested entirely on her November 10, 2020 written responses to a request for comments the Commission had served in September 2020. Count Three alleged failure to cooperate under MCR 9.202(B)(1)(f), based on her counsel’s objections to five of the supplemental questions the Commission posed on October 25, 2021, which sought her knowledge of the investigation of Judge Nance and her communications with Judge Nance and that judge’s counsel.

She denied all of it and raised affirmative defenses.

The Hearing Officer Said No

The hearing ran eight days beginning June 9, 2025. On October 14, 2025 the hearing officer issued a report concluding that disciplinary counsel had not established the charges by a preponderance of the evidence.

He called the dispute petty and said it should have been resolved without a formal hearing. He found her assault allegation weak but not misconduct, and found it unproven that she made a particular remark about a white man striking a Black female judge. On the tussle he wrote that she could make a good faith argument that in trying to retrieve her receipt, the owner snatched it away from her. On Count Three he found no violation, noting she had answered numerous inquiries during the investigation. In the companion case he found the second judge had not intentionally falsified her testimony and had been asked to recall a minor event she thought was long over.

The Commission Said Yes, Twice

Disciplinary counsel objected to the report, the parties briefed the objections through the winter, and the Commission heard oral argument on March 9, 2026, streamed publicly. On July 28, 2026 it filed its decision and recommendation with the Michigan Supreme Court. It is sixty three pages, and it goes through the hearing officer’s findings one at a time.

It sustained Count One and Count Two by a preponderance of the evidence. Its central answer to the hearing officer is evidentiary: it holds that his finding about the receipt being snatched away is unequivocally refuted by the shop’s security video, and much of its own fact section is devoted to what that video shows. On Count Two it concluded her responses to the request for comments were not made under oath, but that MCR 9.221(B) put her on notice that complete candor was required, because her signature attested to the truth of her answers.

On Count Three it agreed with him and rejected its own counsel’s charge, finding disciplinary counsel had not established that objecting to five questions amounted to a failure to cooperate.

In a footnote the Commission added these facts: that she has never retreated from the assault claim, and testified at the public hearing, this time unquestionably under oath, that the owner intended to injure her and did assault her.

Nine Months, and Where the Number Came From

For the false report to police, the Commission looked at a line of Michigan cases involving judges adjudicated guilty of alcohol related driving misdemeanors, where suspensions without pay ran from forty five to ninety days, and noted the difference that Judge Brue was never charged with anything. It also cited a removal case involving a judge who lied to police to cover a drunk driving offense and then misled the Commission.

For the statements to the Commission it relied on In re Simpson, 500 Mich 533 (2017), where the Supreme Court held that an intentional misrepresentation made while not under oath during a Commission investigation warrants a lesser, though still serious, sanction. In Simpson the Commission recommended removal and the Supreme Court imposed nine months without pay. The Commission took that number.

Nine months without pay for a district judge is a substantial sanction, and it is worth saying plainly that the Commission did not get there through the bicycle. It got there through the report to police and the written answers, which is to say through candor rather than through the rental dispute.

Her Petition

She petitioned for review on September 9, 2026, asking the Court to follow the hearing officer and dismiss, or at most to impose a public censure. Her counsel include lawyers from the National Conference of Black Lawyers.

THE LIP READERS

Her lead argument: The shop’s security video has no sound. To establish what was said at the counter, disciplinary counsel retained three lip readers to interpret the silent footage and testify to what the people on it were saying. Her first issue is that no Michigan court has ever permitted lip reader testimony as expert opinion about what is said on a silent recording.

Surveillance footage without audio is ubiquitous in criminal cases, and the proposition that an expert may tell a factfinder what the silent mouths were saying is not established law in most states.

THE OTHER FOUR

She argues the Commission’s Count One findings rest on a flawed premise and that it erred in finding misrepresentation on Count Two; that the Commission applied the wrong standard in rejecting her first affirmative defense; that exculpatory evidence was improperly withheld from her; and that if any misconduct is found, the sanction is wildly disproportionate under the Michigan factors governing judicial discipline.

On proportionality she offers two comparisons. She cites a case in which a judge intentionally and falsely convicted someone of three crimes and then knowingly made false and misleading statements to the Commission, and was suspended for ten days. She cites In re Binkowski, 420 Mich 97 (1984), where a judge altered a Commission admonishment letter to make it appear the complaints had been dismissed and showed it to colleagues, and received a public censure. Her position is that her conduct merits at most a censure at the lowest end of the scale.

Where the Race Question Sits

Judge Brue’s position is that she was treated with racial animus at the shop, pointing to language used toward her including the phrases “free ride” and “you guys”, and her petition recounts that an employee told the judges they were not getting a free ride before the owner was ever involved. She also characterizes what followed as a campaign against her by the owner, who went to the Commission a week later.

Disciplinary counsel’s closing argument attacks that head on. It contends that in the context of a bike shop a refusal to pay for a rental is literally an attempt to get a free ride; that the weight of the evidence showed any such phrase was not related to race; that she decided early that the owner was racist without a demonstrable basis; and that a claim of racism is not a shield to excuse misbehavior.

The hearing officer, the only person who sat through all of the evidence, found the assault allegation weak but not misconduct and found the specific racial remark attributed to her unproven, and recommended dismissal of the entire complaint. The Commission disagreed on two counts. The Supreme Court has not spoken.

The Procedural History Is Part of the Story

The hearing officer denied disciplinary counsel’s motion to consolidate the two judges’ cases and then granted both indefinite adjournments pending an outside study. The Commission overrode him in a January 13, 2025 order, holding that indefinitely pausing both matters ran afoul of MCR 9.231(A), which requires a master to hold the hearing within a reasonable period and set a completion date, and directing under MCR 9.243 that it proceed. In the companion case he had also recommended, on an interlocutory basis, that the Commission grant the second judge’s motion to dismiss; the Commission rejected that too. Its chairperson and one commissioner were recused from the order directing the hearing forward.

The Michigan Supreme Court then had to intervene more than once, directing on its own motion that the hearing be completed by July 1, 2025 and addressing an emergency complaint for superintending control. The Black Women Lawyers Association of Michigan sought leave to file an amicus brief and was denied.

THE STUDY THE CASE WAS PAUSED FOR

The Commission’s own 2025 annual report describes it: an analysis by the National Center for State Courts, examining judicial disciplinary processes for potential racial disparities in how requests for investigation are filed, processed and resolved against Black judges compared to their White counterparts.

So the hearing officer paused two complaints against two Black judges pending a study of whether the Commission handles complaints against Black judges differently, and the Commission ordered him to proceed. Both positions are defensible. A disciplinary body cannot park its docket indefinitely waiting on a consultant, and a hearing officer can reasonably think a pending inquiry into the process bears on cases in front of him. Stating both is not an accusation against anyone. It is the record, and it explains the calendar.

How It Would Work in Texas

Michigan front-loads the independent factfinder. A formal complaint goes to a hearing officer the Supreme Court appoints, who is not the charging body, who holds a public hearing and writes a report. That is why this record contains a reasoned finding of no misconduct by someone with no stake in the charge, and why a reader can see exactly where the Commission and its hearing officer parted company.

Texas has no equivalent stage for an ordinary sanction. The State Commission on Judicial Conduct investigates, decides and issues the sanction itself. The public orders this series reads every week are the work of the same body that brought the matter, and there is no independent report in which a neutral factfinder tells the Commission it got a case wrong. For what the Commission can and cannot do, see our explainer, Who Polices Texas Judges? The SCJC Explained.

A Texas judge’s route to an independent decision-maker runs the other way. After the sanction issues, the judge has thirty days to ask the chief justice for a special court of review under Government Code section 33.034. Within ten days the chief justice selects three court of appeals justices by lot, excluding any from the judge’s own district and any serving on the Commission. The court must hold a hearing within thirty days of the charging document and decide within sixty days of the hearing, there is no jury, and subsection (i) says plainly that its decision is not appealable. Case File No. 20 covers a judge who took that route.

Review of a sanction issued in an informal proceeding is by trial de novo, as that term is used on appeal from justice to county court. Review of a sanction issued in a formal proceeding is a review of the record, on the law and facts already presented, with additional evidence only if the court permits it for good cause. Most of the public admonitions and warnings this series covers come out of informal proceedings, so trial de novo is the usual posture, but it is not automatic.

Texas resolves these matters in months rather than years, and this file is a fair illustration of what years look like. What Texas gives up is the thing that makes this Michigan record unusual: a public document, written by someone the charging body did not control, saying the case should never have been brought. In Texas that assessment, if anyone made it, would come after the sanction was already public, and only if the judge asked for it.

The Other Judge and the Opposite Result

The second judge at the shop that evening was Hon. Debra Nance of the 46th District Court in Southfield.

Her complaint, Formal Complaint No. 106, issued on December 14, 2022, and charged one thing only: that when the Commission questioned her about the events at the shop, she knowingly made several false statements while under oath. Nothing in it concerned her conduct at the counter. The same hearing officer heard it over six days between June 16 and July 1, 2025 and issued a report finding she did not engage in misconduct. Earlier he had gone further, recommending on an interlocutory basis that the Commission dismiss her case outright, which the Commission refused in September 2024 before ordering the hearing to proceed.

This time the Commission accepted the result. Its own list of resolved matters records the disposition in a single line: Formal Complaint No. 106 was dismissed by the Commission. Reporting in mid August 2026 described her as cleared of misconduct.

So two judges were charged out of the same hour on Mackinac Island, and within about two weeks in the summer of 2026 the Commission dismissed the complaint against one of them and asked the Supreme Court to suspend the other for nine months without pay.

The charges were not the same. Judge Nance faced a single count about her answers to the Commission. Judge Brue faced that plus a count about what she told police at the scene, and that is the count the Commission treated as the serious one and the count that drove the sanction.

One piece of context about this court. Case File No. 39 covers Judge Kenneth King of the same 36th District Court, whose own Commission case was stayed in September 2026 on a stipulation by the parties.

How It Played in the Press

A four year judicial discipline fight that produced an eight day public hearing, a sixty three page Commission decision and a recommendation that a sitting judge lose nine months of pay drew one substantial newspaper story, the Detroit News in October 2025, which reported the hearing officer’s conclusion that the complaints should not have been brought. That piece was syndicated and recirculated, and most of what a search turns up is the same reporting under another masthead.

The Commission’s own docket page publishes the filings as they come in, including the Master’s report, the objections, the decision and her petition, and the Commission streamed its March oral argument. A reader who wants to know what happened in this case has to read the case. There is no secondary account of the sanction recommendation, the lip reader issue or the companion dismissal that would let anyone skip it.

Where Things Stand

She remains a judge of the 36th District Court. The Commission’s recommendation of a nine month suspension without pay is before the Michigan Supreme Court, her petition for review is filed, and the Commission has filed its reply brief. The Court has granted the Commission leave to file over the page limit and allowed her a sur-reply, so briefing is still being completed. Oral argument has been requested. No court has found that she committed misconduct, and the Commission’s own docket still lists Formal Complaint No. 105 as pending.

The Gavel of Shame will update this file when the Court rules. Two things are worth watching: whether it adopts the findings of the officer who heard the witnesses or the conclusions of the body that charged the case, and whether it says anything about lip readers.

Sources

PRIMARY SOURCES

• Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission, Formal Complaint No. 105 docket page, which publishes every filing in the case: the complaint and first amended complaint, her answer and affirmative defenses, the Supreme Court’s order appointing the Master, the Master’s report of October 14, 2025, disciplinary counsel’s objections, the notice of the March 2026 oral argument, the Commission’s Decision and Recommendation of July 28, 2026, her Petition for Review of September 9, 2026, the Commission’s reply brief, and the Supreme Court’s order allowing over-length briefing and a sur-reply. jtc.courts.mi.gov
• Order of the Judicial Tenure Commission, FC 105 and FC 106, January 13, 2025, directing the hearing to proceed under MCR 9.231(A) and MCR 9.243. jtc.courts.mi.gov (pdf)
• Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission, resolved formal complaints and disciplined judicial officers, recording that FC No. 106 as to Hon. Debra Nance was dismissed by the Commission and that FC No. 105 is pending. jtc.courts.mi.gov
• Disciplinary Counsel’s Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law, FC 105, August 11, 2025. cms4files.revize.com (pdf)
• Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission, 2025 Annual Report, case summaries for FC 105 and FC 106 and the National Center for State Courts analysis. cms4files.revize.com (pdf)

CITED IN THE FILINGS

• In re Hon. J. Cedric Simpson, 500 Mich 533 (2017), the nine month suspension the Commission used as its anchor for an intentional misrepresentation made while not under oath. courtlistener.com
• In re Binkowski, 420 Mich 97 (1984), the public censure she cites on proportionality. courtlistener.com

NEWS COVERAGE

• Judge: state board should not have filed misconduct complaints against Detroit, Southfield judges, The Detroit News (October 17, 2025). detroitnews.com
• Metro Detroit jurists’ misconduct cases should be tossed, judge tells oversight body, carrying the same reporting. bluewaterhealthyliving.com

TEXAS REFERENCE

• Tex. Gov’t Code § 33.034, the special court of review: thirty days to request, three court of appeals justices selected by lot, record review for formal proceedings and trial de novo for informal ones, no jury, and no appeal from the decision. Texas Government Code ch. 33
• Deandra Grant Law: Who Polices Texas Judges? The SCJC Explained. texasdwisite.com

• This post summarizes public filings of the Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission and the Michigan Supreme Court as of November 2026. No court has found that Judge Brue committed misconduct. The hearing officer appointed by the Supreme Court found the charges unproven and recommended dismissal; the Commission sustained two of three counts and recommended a nine month suspension without pay; Judge Brue has petitioned for review, briefing is still being completed, and the Court has not ruled on the merits. Everything described here is therefore an allegation, a recommendation, or a contested finding. Judge Brue has denied misconduct throughout. Her contention that she was treated with racial animus, and disciplinary counsel’s contention that the claim was unfounded, are both unresolved, and nothing here takes a position on either. The shop’s owner and employees, the responding officers and the other private individuals described in the filings are referred to here only by role; the owner is accused of no wrongdoing and was the original complainant. The companion proceeding against Judge Nance was dismissed by the Commission; she was not found to have committed misconduct, and her case is described here only as it bears on this record. This is general commentary on a public record, not legal advice.