Federal complaint filed by Ohio judge accuses fellow judges of racism, harassment
A Franklin County judge has filed a federal complaint against her fellow judges, accusing them of treating her in a racist and harassing way for several years, including several of them of pushing her to leave a leadership position within the court.
Judge Kimberly Cocroft, who has been a Franklin County Common Pleas judge for 15 years, filed the complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
The Dispatch first reached out to Cocroft in May after learning the complaint had been filed. However, Cocroft did not respond to multiple phone calls, emails, written requests or visits to her office until Monday. Cocroft then provided a copy of the complaint to The Dispatch.
The 44-page complaint ranges from accusations that court staff did not place her photograph in a position of prominence at the Franklin County court complex until two weeks after she began her leadership tenure to more serious allegations, such as fellow judges blackmailing her into resigning from the administrative judge role she held for 10 months in 2022.
But all of the complaints revolve around a common theme: Cocroft and her staff have received different treatment because of their race and/or gender, and Cocroft's requests to the current administrative judge for an investigation have gone unaddressed.
The Dispatch reached out to several of the other judges identified by Cocroft in her complaint, including current Administrative Judge Kim Brown. None immediately responded to requests for interviews.
Several court officials, including the court's administrator and human resources director, said they had no comment regarding the situation.
Cocroft one of only three Black judges among 17 on the court
Cocroft is one of two Black women currently serving as judges in Franklin County Common Pleas Court. She was first appointed to the bench in 2009 and has won elections in 2010, 2016 and in 2022, when she ran unopposed.
The Common Pleas Court has 17 judges. Three are Black and seven are women.
Cocroft had been elected by her fellow Common Pleas Court judges to serve as the administrative judge, a role that would oversee the court's policies and the implementation of any new programs or initiatives that judge deems necessary. She was the first woman to ever hold the administrative judge role in Franklin County.
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Besides those already mentioned, the allegations in her complaint include:
Paperwork listing Cocroft as the administrative judge was not prepared when she took over the role, despite her being elected six months earlier by her fellow judges.
Training for Black staff members hired by Cocroft was conducted differently than for employees who previously worked for Cocroft, who were white.
Other judges questioned Cocroft's decision making in assigning jury panels for trials, a part of the administrative judge role, which she does not believe happened for other administrative judges.
White judges had technology updated in their courtroom before Cocroft's courtroom was updated.
Fellow judges accused Cocroft of making decisions that impacted the operation of their courtrooms without consulting with or telling the other judges about them.
Several court reporters rolled their eyes at Cocroft during a meeting and a Black court reporter did not speak up on Cocroft's behalf.
Probation officers, described by Cocroft as white men, have questioned Cocroft's authority both directly and indirectly, as well as questioning her decision when it comes to people under court supervision.
Requests by Cocroft to cover staffing when her bailiff or court reporter has been unavailable have not been responded to in as timely a manner as what Cocroft said she believes her white colleagues receive.
Several of Cocroft's allegations in the complaint provided to The Dispatch are prefaced with the phrase "to my knowledge" and do not provide supporting documentation or verification.
Two judges accused of telling Cocroft which Black women to emulate
Before becoming administrative judge, Cocroft said she began to experience different treatment, including with how she received training. The situation reached a head when she said two white, male judges had come to her office to talk to her about an employee who had resigned, but Cocroft had fired before the period designated by the employee's resignation.
"They initially came to inquire about why that employee was no longer working for me, and for me, it was a personnel matter," Cocroft said. "Then it transitioned into a conversation about me."
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Cocroft said the two white judges told her they had heard rumblings that she was "unapproachable," "aggressive" and "not necessarily friendly." She said they brought up other prominent Black women in the community and justice system, telling Cocroft she should act more like them.
"I said to both of them, 'You don't have the right in all your paternalism and privilege to come into my office and give me a list of Black women I should be more like'," Cocroft said. "You would not accept me coming to your office with a list of white men you should try and emulate."
A poll conducted by the Columbus Bar Association in 2022 ranked Cocroft the second-lowest of the 17 judges in Common Pleas Court. The poll, conducted anonymously and responded to by more than 400 attorneys, ranked judicial temperament, timeliness, legal knowledge and objectivity, among other factors.
Cocroft said she did not trust the poll's results because there was no way to ensure that the attorneys who responded actually had appeared in front of her and if so, how frequently. The Columbus Bar Association no longer conducts performance polls.
Cocroft decided in 2021 to hire all Black staffers
Cocroft said in her time as administrative judge, she faced "unexpected obstacles" in her plans for changing things at the court, but she didn't necessarily think anything of it because similar hurdles had arisen previously.
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After deciding in 2021 that she would hire all Black staffers, Cocroft said those employees received different training than her previous hires had when they began their work.
"I thought what's the harm, I'll get the most competent person," Cocroft said. "I could see the difference between how they were being trained and how my prior staff had been trained."
Each Common Pleas Court judge has a bailiff and staff attorney. Secretaries and court reporters often split duties between two or more judges. Cocroft no longer uses a court reporter, instead relying on the court's audio and video recording services.
She does not currently have a staff attorney, a position she says in the complaint she is unable to fill because the county's human resources director has created a "hostile work environment."
Court administrator's complaint against Cocroft later withdrawn
In late 2022, the court's administrator filed a complaint against Cocroft, accusing her of yelling at and belittling staff members, pitting employees against each other and talking about the administrator with subordinates behind her back. Another judge pulled Cocroft aside and told her about the complaint.
"The judge said 'It's really serious, she's lawyered up, but if you will resign as administrative judge for 2023 then this complaint will go away'," Cocroft said. "He kept emphasizing that she had lawyered up."
The administrator said in her complaint that Cocroft had five staff members resign or be fired and told staff members who cried during meetings that they should not because she did not have that luxury as a Black woman. Cocroft also "repeatedly claims that many of the Judges that we work with are racist and insensitive," the complaint says.
Cocroft said she felt the efforts to have her resign felt like blackmail and that she had done nothing wrong. She crafted a 31-page response to the complaint against her and sought to speak to the presiding judge.
After more back and forth and a failed attempt for a guided conversation between herself and the court administrator who had filed the complaint, Cocroft says she got a notice for a meeting at which she felt there was no appetite for an investigation.
"Every judge except Judge (Jaiza) Page was prepared to vote me out as administrative judge based on this complaint without ever talking to me," Cocroft said.
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Multiple documents provided by Cocroft describe the complaint against Cocroft as being withdrawn, and Cocroft voluntarily resigning from her position as administrative judge in the best interest of the court as a whole. Cocroft was represented by an attorney at the meeting where she resigned.
Cocroft told The Dispatch that the court administrator, who traditionally informs the courthouse complex of changes in leadership, sent an email the day after Cocroft's resignation, announcing that Cocroft had been replaced. The administrator is who had filed the withdrawn complaint against Cocroft.
"It felt vindictive on a certain level to me," Cocroft said.
Cocroft wants investigation, apology
In her EEOC complaint, Cocroft said the stress of the complaint being filed against her and being blackmailed by her fellow judges caused her to no longer be able to sleep through the night and has a "constant diet of stress relief medicine and blood pressure tea."
Following her departure as administrative judge and the withdrawal of the court administrator's complaint against her, Cocroft said she has sought an investigation into whether the administrator who filed the complaint did so in bad faith. She says her efforts to get that investigation have gone unanswered or ignored for months, which led to her filing the federal EEO complaint.
Emails provided to The Dispatch between Cocroft, other judges and the prosecutor's office show an ongoing back and forth where Cocroft was presented with possible solutions that Cocroft rejected or said will not accomplish her goal.
In an email to an assistant prosecutor, Cocroft said the communications were "laced with a tone that is both dismissive and unnecessarily aggressive and seemingly intended to intimidate me into submission."
"You have made clear there is no intention to even try and examine the gender and race discrimination and retaliation I have experienced at all levels," Cocroft wrote.
The reply to Cocroft's email included information about what Cocroft could do to advance her allegations to the judge who took over the administrative role for 2024, Kim Brown, so that the court as a whole could determine what to do moving forward.
Documents provided by Cocroft also show Brown had offered on Feb. 20 to propose to all 17 judges that an outside investigator be appointed to oversee Cocroft's complaints. A meeting in March was held with all the judges to discuss the situation.
Cocroft said comments at the meeting said that people, which she took to mean herself, had a "snowflake mentality" and that people "needed to act like adults."
"It just confirmed my belief that there's something illegal, discriminatory, unfair, hostile and retaliatory happening," she told The Dispatch. "I had always believed there was a racial or gender-based element to the challenges I faced."
In an email Cocroft sent after the meeting, she said her complaint had been "reduced to frivolity and behavior about which I should 'learn how to act like an adult and just get over,'" which "further reflects the hostile environment and retaliatory position that has been taken."
Cocroft acknowledged in that correspondence she had not provided the other judges with details of her complaints.
"I have been vilified and belittled by many of the judges who believe what they think is my concern is not really a big deal," Cocroft wrote.
Cocroft also said several judges are actively retaliating against her by trying to amend parts of the court's anti-harassment policy to remove language about how investigations are conducted. As recently as June 20, Cocroft received emails from another judge seeking to find a resolution to her complaints, including an outside mediator.
"It's documented that the issues that have been raised with performance by my staff and me have have not been raised with white judges or their white staffs," Cocroft told The Dispatch on Monday. "For me, this is not a personality conflict, this is an intentional decision to use processes to unfairly malign my professional reputation. It moves beyond personality when you start to weaponize race."
She said she hopes the complaint will result in an investigation being conducted, but she also wants a public apology.
"The apology needs to be as loud and intentional as the disrespect has been," Cocroft said. "I recognize the unprecedented nature of what I've done, but it's literally affected my health, my staff's health. I wasn't willing to do that anymore. It has to be better."
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Judge Kimberly Cocroft accuses colleagues of racism, harassment
