{"id":487528,"date":"2026-10-07T01:50:06","date_gmt":"2026-10-07T01:50:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/487528\/"},"modified":"2026-10-07T01:50:06","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T01:50:06","slug":"judge-michelle-tong-faces-renewed-prosecutors-boycott","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/487528\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge Michelle Tong faces renewed prosecutors\u2019 boycott"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the second time in two years, the San Francisco district attorney\u2019s office is refusing to try cases before Judge Michelle Tong, a former public defender, alleging that she is biased against the DA.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If the court allows it to continue doing so, the DA\u2019s office will de-facto oust Tong from the Hall of Justice \u2014 again.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rochelle East, San Francisco Superior Court\u2019s presiding judge, ruled Tuesday morning that Jenkins\u2019 office could blanket refuse to present cases before Tong. Ana Gonzalez, chief assistant to the DA, argued Tong \u201chas been abusive in treatment of police and prosecutors.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAll attorneys in California have the right to exercise a challenge,\u201d wrote the district attorney\u2019s office to Mission Local, to ensure they \u201ccan have confidence their cases will be heard by a fair and unbiased judicial officer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rose Mishaan, a private defense attorney who filed an objection<\/a> in 2025 when District Attorney Brooke Jenkins first tried \u2014 and subsequently succeeded \u2014 in ousting Tong, said the office\u2019s action sets a precedent where attorneys can \u201cjudge-shop\u201d and search for courts where they\u2019ll receive favorable outcomes.<\/p>\n

\u201cEffectively, Judge Tong will be driven away from the criminal court\u201d if this continues, she said. \u201cIf we allow the DA to do this, we are giving them the authority to decide who does and who does not get to sit at the Hall of Justice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jenkins\u2019 prosecutors first launched a blanket challenge<\/a> against Tong in 2025, when they accused the former public defender of bias. That challenge led to at least 340 cases not being heard, before Tong was relocated to the city\u2019s civil courts.<\/p>\n

Tong returned to criminal court Tuesday morning,\u00a0 tasked with preliminary hearing and arraignments in felony cases.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But by the end of Tuesday morning, not a single legal issue in those cases had been heard. Instead, in every case, DA prosecutors lodged what is called a \u201c170.6,\u201d<\/a> a civil procedure that lets attorneys request their case be reassigned once-per-case, without offering a reason why.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That procedure exists so attorneys can avoid courtrooms where they believe they or their client will be personally targeted or face prejudice. In practice, however, the filings are used often by attorneys on both sides who dislike the presiding judge they\u2019re facing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A 2026 California Supreme Court decision, J.O. v Super Ct., found that \u201cbad faith\u201d en-masse objections to appearing before a particular judge violate the separation of powers. Attorneys must now prove genuine \u201cprejudice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gonzalez, the DA chief assistant, said her office\u2019s motions passed muster under the case and listed a series of examples she said showed Tong\u2019s prejudice, like an instance when Tong called a police officer \u201cshady\u201d after his testimony in civil court.<\/p>\n

The public defender\u2019s office argued the objections were unconstitutional, but East ultimately decided in the DA\u2019s favor based on a single instance: In 2019, Gonzalez told the court, Tong allegedly said to Aaron Laycook of the DA\u2019s office that she would \u201cget even\u201d with him after a contentious hearing, when she was still a public defender.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Aleem Raja, felony director of the public defender\u2019s office, said he was concerned East made her ruling based on the belief that Tong had been a judge at the time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are concerned that the judge made a ruling based on a mishearing of the DA\u2019s statement,\u201d Raja said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tuesday afternoon, a visiting judge replaced Tong in Department 9 of the Hall of Justice, attorneys at the court confirmed. Tong is expected to return tomorrow. If she does, the DA appears ready to continue refusing hearings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the second time in two years, the San Francisco district attorney\u2019s office is refusing to try cases…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":487529,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[3622,7359,16047,17262,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-487528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-court","tag-district-attorney","tag-judge","tag-public-defender","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487529"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}