Silver lining in N.H. Supreme Court scandal?
The decline and fall of New Hampshire’s Chief Justice Gordon MacDonald for favoritism in employment comes at an opportune time for the Rand school funding case. The MacDonald investigation revealed the involvement of other justices in ratifying MacDonald’s chicanery.
In Rand, the state has been sued for not living up to the court’s Claremont decision, which declared the state derelict in its constitutional duty to fund adequate public education. Having steadfastly prioritized low state‐level taxes over constitutionally mandated public
education, the state petitioned the Supreme Court to reverse itself.
Several of the justices, including MacDonald, had argued against Claremont in past roles as state attorneys. The plaintiffs, reasonably, asked them to recuse themselves. All refused to concede even an apparent conflict of interest sufficient for recusal.
With the majority of the court now tarred by MacDonald’s malfeasance, the case for recusal becomes less hypothetical, for the justices are known to have acquiesced to unlawful action in the courthouse.
Will a citizen outcry shake the justices’ obstinate position on recusal? At the very least, the plaintiffs should seek to delay Rand while the Judicial Conduct Committee considers the fallout from the MacDonald scandal.