District Attorney Brooke Jenkins\u2019 office can no longer refuse to try all of its cases before Judge Michelle Tong, a San Francisco judge has ruled.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On Thursday, Oct. 8, Superior Court Presiding Judge Rochelle East reversed her own ruling<\/a> from just two days earlier, in which she\u2019d allowed Jenkins to make a blanket objection to Tong. The first ruling came when the district attorney\u2019s office said Tong, a former public defender, showed bias against law enforcement and prosecutors. After hearing more testimony on the 8th, East changed her mind, instead finding that the district attorney\u2019s argument was in \u201cbad faith.\u201d<\/p>\n Her decision could signal an end to these blanket boycotts\u00a0 \u2014 which both defense attorneys and prosecutors have long used to push out particular judges they dislike.\u00a0<\/p>\n In February, the public defender\u2019s office filed<\/a>, in-effect, a similar blanket objection against former Drug Court Judge Murlene Randle. The district attorney\u2019s office filed<\/a> a blanket objection against retired appellate justice J. Anthony Kline in 2022. Both judges were moved off those assignments.\u00a0<\/p>\n But East\u2019s decision, made possible by a recent California Supreme Court ruling<\/a>, shows that this practice might be coming to an end in San Francisco.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rose Mishaan, a private defense attorney who has opposed<\/a> blanket refusals, called East\u2019s decision a win for \u201cthe rule of law\u201d and \u201cthe separation of powers.\u201d<\/p>\n Judge Tong, the center of last week\u2019s judicial drama, is no stranger to these challenges. In early 2025, when she was first transferred from civil to criminal court, the district attorney\u2019s office issued<\/a> a blanket refusal to appear before her, accusing Tong of incompetence. Over 340 cases were delayed before Tong was returned to civil courts. Tong also faced a blanket objection from the city attorney\u2019s office earlier this year, which was sustained.<\/p>\n The new blanket challenge began on Tong\u2019s first day back in criminal court, where she was mostly overseeing arraignments. The district attorney\u2019s office repeatedly invoked what is called a \u201c170.6,\u201d<\/a> a procedure that lets attorneys request a case be reassigned without offering a reason why.<\/p>\n The procedure was designed basically as a free \u201cget another judge rule,\u201d said Eric Fish, a law professor at UC Davis who has written about judicial disqualifications. Legally, he said, as long as \u201cyou\u2019re able to truthfully state that the judge is biased against you or your client,\u201d these objections are allowed for a single case.\u00a0<\/p>\n