A Prepare dinner County choose was reassigned, ordered to endure bias coaching and can face a state disciplinary investigation for allegedly circulating a racist meme.
The choose, Caroline Glennon-Goodman, was the topic of an order issued Friday by the Circuit Courtroom’s Govt Committee, which convened to deal with the matter after Chief Decide Timothy C. Evans fielded the allegation.
In a screenshot obtained by WBEZ, Glennon-Goodman shared a meme that depicts a smiling younger Black boy and a Black little one’s leg with an digital monitor on it. The meme is headlined “little tiks [sic] … My First Ankle Monitor.”
Glennon-Goodman wrote on the submit, “My husband’s thought of Christmas humor,” in line with the screenshot.
In its order, the Govt Committee wrote that Glennon-Goodman’s alleged actions “might violate the Code of Judicial Conduct” they usually stated they have been briefly reassigning her and referring the matter to the Illinois Judicial Inquiry Board “to advertise public confidence within the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.”
Earlier than the Govt Committee’s order, a outstanding Black legal professionals’ group condemned Glennon-Goodman’s circulation of the meme, with out mentioning her by identify.
In an announcement Wednesday, the Prepare dinner County Bar Affiliation stated, “It’s our understanding that the picture was meant to be shared with a unique viewers and that the choose concerned has apologized profusely. Nonetheless, such media is inappropriate to share whatever the viewers.”
The assertion additionally stated, “Any choose ought to be unbiased sufficient to not additional flow into such a racist trope … The imagery recollects our nation’s historical past of inappropriate media pictures of Black individuals (corresponding to blackface) and such imagery continues to form the opinions of Black individuals, significantly Black males.”
The Judicial Inquiry Board will decide “whether or not additional sanction is warranted” in Glennon-Goodman’s case, the Govt Committee wrote. She additionally should obtain “further coaching together with the subject of implicit bias.”
A spokesman for Evans declined to remark. Glennon-Goodman, who lives in Glenview, couldn’t be reached Friday.
She turned a choose solely final 12 months, along with her appointment to a emptiness introduced by the state Supreme Courtroom, efficient Feb. 2, 2024. She then gained unopposed as a Democratic candidate within the tenth Subcircuit, the place she changed retiring Decide Claire McWilliams. Her time period is meant to final till 2030.
Earlier than changing into a choose, Glennon-Goodman was a longtime worker within the county public defender’s workplace, beginning there in 1997 and dealing over 20 years on murder circumstances. She graduated from the John Marshall Regulation College and acquired a bachelor’s diploma from the College of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
After Glennon-Goodman was appointed to the bench a 12 months in the past, the general public defender’s workplace issued an announcement congratulating her and one other assistant public defender who turned a choose at the moment, saying each have been “extremely effectively revered by their friends and the better authorized group.”
Dan Mihalopoulos is an investigative reporter on WBEZ’s Authorities & Politics Group.
