A Cook County judge running for retention next month is under investigation by the Illinois Judicial Inquiry Board for her interactions with an attorney in eviction cases last year at the Markham Courthouse, Injustice Watch has learned.
The investigation into Judge Ieshia Gray comes after she repeatedly denied the attorney’s routine requests for his cases to be heard by a new judge and then ultimately issued a lengthy order recusing herself from his cases while bashing him as “unprofessional and abrasive,” saying he “appears trapped in a time continuum,” and accusing him of “borderline” defamation.
Judicial Inquiry Board investigations are rare. Last year, the board investigated just 64 of the 527 complaints it received against judges and judicial candidates statewide. The vast majority of investigations end without discipline. By law, the board doesn’t disclose information about its investigations, so it’s unclear where the inquiry into Gray’s conduct stands. Gray did not respond to multiple interview requests.
Gray isn’t the only judge running for retention this year who is currently the subject of a JIB complaint. Judge Kathy Flanagan was referred to the JIB in June by Cook County Chief Judge Timothy Evans after a lawyer from a top law firm was handcuffed to a chair in her courtroom, though it’s not clear whether the board has opened an investigation into the complaint.
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The discord between Gray and the attorney, Steven Anderson, began in May 2019, when Gray was presiding over an eviction trial at the fourth municipal district in Maywood where Anderson represented the landlord.
A transcript of the hearing shows Gray took issue with the way Anderson asked questions of the tenant. Gray said he had “badgered” her and stopped him several times to ask him to keep his questions simple and to not be argumentative with the tenant or tell her when she could answer questions.
“Do you know what happened?” Gray said to the tenant at one point during the trial. “Sometime between Mr. Anderson walking through this door and stepping up here to this bench, he was confused; and he thought that instead of him just being the plaintiff’s attorney, that he was going to step up and put this black robe on and do my job. OK. That he will not be doing.”
Gray ruled in favor of the tenant, but Anderson, who disagreed with the ruling, continued arguing with the judge. Gray reminded him she had given him ample opportunity to make his points.
But Anderson wasn’t done.
“I have to be heard. I did not interrupt you,” he said, adding, “You are exhibiting a clear prejudice against plaintiff in this case — you have done it multiple times.”
They spoke over each other until Gray said, “I will ask counsel to be led out of here.”
Anderson wasn’t escorted from the courtroom, but he said he felt mistreated by Gray and reported the interaction to the presiding judge of the Maywood Courthouse, to Evans, and to the Judicial Inquiry Board. The presiding judge told Anderson in an email she was going to do “whatever is necessary to insure [sic] that all are treated with respect.” Meanwhile, a staff member of the chief judge referred Anderson back to the Judicial Inquiry Board. Six months later, Anderson said he received a letter from the board stating it had closed his complaint.
Gray later wrote in an order she had no recollection of this case and was not aware of Anderson’s complaint to the JIB. “While this court understands if this case bears significant weight for Mr. Anderson, the case noted does not have a placeholder in this court’s tenure as a jurist,” she wrote.
That was the end of it — until Gray was assigned back to eviction court last year.
Requesting a new judge
In October 2023, Gray was assigned to hear initial eviction cases at the Markham Courthouse, where Anderson does the bulk of his work representing landlords.
Anderson said he worried his 2019 complaint against Gray would become an issue for his clients, so he requested a new judge for about 10 cases before Gray by filing what attorneys call a routine motion for a substitution of judge, or an SOJ. Illinois law allows each party to request a one-time SOJ as a matter of right, with essentially no questions asked.
At a virtual hearing on those requests in late October 2023, Anderson’s microphone was muted, and he was kicked out of the Zoom room several times, he said.
When his cases were called, Gray told him she couldn’t find his requests in the system and told him to wait while she heard other cases and then muted him when he began to speak, he said.
Gray later said she removed him from the Zoom “to avoid his continued disruption of court” after he took to the chat to complain about his cases being delayed, a claim Anderson disputes. After that hearing, he said Gray granted a handful of his SOJ requests.
Then on Nov. 9, Gray denied more of his requests for a new judge. In a written order, Gray said she was responsible for kick-starting the process of connecting tenants to legal aid and rental assistance, and she was concerned tenants would not receive the help if they bypassed her courtroom. She accused Anderson of trying to manipulate the system to his clients’ advantage.
Anderson said he wasn’t trying to manipulate the system or circumvent the program and noted tenants still received services when his requests for a new judge were granted.
He continued filing new cases on behalf of clients and requesting a new judge. On Nov. 14, at a hearing on those new requests, Gray again denied them and restated her reasons. Anderson began asking questions but didn’t get an answer. He then said he would submit requests for a substitution of judge “for cause,” which usually means a party in a case believes the judge has a bias and can’t be impartial.
“That motion will be denied, as well,” Gray said, according to Anderson and two other attorneys who were present at the hearing.
Anderson told Injustice Watch he couldn’t believe what he heard. He said he asked Gray whether she planned to deny a motion he hadn’t yet written — a motion she was barred from hearing because it was about her.
“Judge Gray then denied saying that,” an attorney present at the hearing said in a sworn statement attached to Anderson’s request for a new judge.
Anderson submitted new requests for a different judge in at least seven of his cases, stating in the motions Gray was openly retaliating against him. He said in his career, he’s only filed one other SOJ for cause.
“Lawyers don’t like to have issues with judges,” he told Injustice Watch. “And by filing that kind of motion, you are basically saying I can’t get a fair shake in front of this judge or my clients can’t get a fair shake in front of this judge.”
Under the law, Gray should have transferred his cases to another judge to hear his arguments because the request was about her, legal experts said.
She didn’t. Instead, she set a hearing on the request before herself in January 2024.
Anderson complained to Judge Tommy Brewer, the presiding judge, and to Evans’ staff. He said he got a call back from Brewer, who told him the hearing date was moved up to Dec. 14, 2023.
That day, Gray recused herself. She later entered an unusual nine-page explanation, which included a searing critique of Anderson, saying his behavior toward her during the October 2023 Zoom hearing had been “unprofessional and abrasive.”
She went on to accuse Anderson of using his clients’ cases “as his own personal playground to exact his personal agenda against this court.” She claimed his motion for a substitution of judge for cause was filled with statements “that are not only false but borderline on defamation.” And she said by contacting her supervising judge and the chief judge, he had “resorted to wielding his 2019 Judicial Inquiry Board complaint against this court as a sword in a harassing and intimidating manner, with no regard for this court’s autonomy.”
She concluded by saying she had moved forward from the 2019 incident with no personal ill will or inability to be impartial, but she was recusing herself because, “Anderson and his antics have become a distraction” and so Anderson could “shift his focus to the effective representation of his clients.”
From then on, Gray granted the requests for a new judge.
Anderson told Injustice Watch he was simply trying to avoid having issues with Gray. But she refused to let him go and held up his client’s cases unnecessarily. And, he said, the order she published calls into question his personal character, legal acumen, and integrity.
“Judge Gray did this, in my opinion, out of pure spite,” Anderson said.
Gray was later assigned to hear civil order of protection cases in the Markham Courthouse. There, courtroom observers from the domestic violence services community said Gray rushed to judgments, sometimes leaving petitioners without protections they qualified for. That assignment ended in September and she’s now a “backup” judge in Markham, a spokesperson for the court said. Earlier this summer, she was also assigned to preside over the new Sauk Village Restorative Justice Community Court.
The public may never know the outcome of the JIB investigation against Gray. The board does not release information about cases unless it files formal disciplinary charges against a judge, which it rarely does.
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