Travis County district judge aims to oust peer who blacklisted her for flurry of suits
A Travis County state district judge on Texas' blacklist of people deemed to be a plaintiff who rehashes meritless claims is now challenging the incumbent judge who gave her that sanction.
Halfway through her current term, District Judge Madeleine Connor decided to run for a different judicial seat in the Democratic primary, the 419th Civil District Court that Judge Catherine Mauzy has presided over since 2018.
Connor's decision to challenge Mauzy is reminiscent of her decision to challenge, and ultimately defeat, District Court Judge Tim Sulak in 2020. Sulak was the person from whom Connor needed to ask permission to continue representing herself in court, after Mauzy in 2019 designated Connor a vexatious litigant.
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Connor, who did not return an email seeking an interview, remains on the Texas vexatious litigants list. She previously worked as general counsel of the Texas Veterans Commission.
Connor has never publicly said that she is challenging Mauzy over the vexatious litigant issue, and the two candidates have not discussed the matter privately, Mauzy said.
However, "it doesn't make sense to me that you would ask the public to put their faith and confidence in you to be a judge, then when you're only a year into that term, ask for the same job on another bench," Mauzy said.
Connor's and Mauzy's current jobs are essentially identical, and Connor's unusual decision to challenge Mauzy on the ballot earned Connor a censure from the Travis County Democratic Party earlier this year.
In its resolution, the party cites Connor's vexatious litigant status as well as the fact that Connor unsuccessfully ran for judge as a Republican multiple times.
Also, if Connor wins, Gov. Greg Abbott will likely appoint a Republican judge to her vacant spot on the 353rd Civil District Court, the resolution pointed out.
"It's taking the will of the voters out of consideration for two years," said David Courreges, president of the Austin Bar Association.
Out of roughly 3,000 Austin attorneys, only 6% of them said they preferred Connor to Mauzy in this Democratic primary, according to an Austin Bar Association poll.
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'Vexatious litigant'
The sanctions against Connor center around a flurry of repetitive lawsuits she filed against the Lost Creek Municipal Utility District's board. Connor, then the president of the Lost Creek Neighborhood Association, represented a man who alleged that the utility district built sidewalks in the neighborhood without having the authority to do so.
Connor later sued board members and neighborhood residents who she said had caused her emotional distress by forcing her removal as president of the neighborhood association.
Mauzy found that Connor had met two thresholds for the ruling under state law: her repeated failures in District Court litigation against the board members as well as U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman's ruling in 2018 that Connor was a vexatious litigant.
U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman wrote in an opinion that Connor had used his court as a “weapon of harassment.”
The Austin-based 3rd Court of Appeals last year rejected Connor's bid to overturn Mauzy's ruling.
Update: This story has been revised to include new comments from Judge Catherine Mauzy.
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas judge censured in primary with fellow Travis County judge
