Atty. Burton suing Youngstown, judges

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

An attorney who was held in contempt of court by Judge Robert Milich last month in municipal court is suing the city.

Andrea Burton filed a lawsuit Thursday against Judge Milich, his colleague Judge Elizabeth Kobly as well as the city.

She is claiming that her First Amendment rights of free speech and 14th Amendment rights of due process and equal protection under the law were violated.

Judge Milich ordered Burton, who is black, jailed July 22 after he asked her in chambers to remove a “Black Lives Matter” button.

She refused, and when they returned to open court, Judge Milich ordered her to take the button off again and she refused.

She was then taken into custody, but Judge Milich stayed his order after lawyers who negotiated for Burton worked out a compromise that Burton would not wear the button in court while an appeal of the citation was pending and also that she would adhere to the court’s dress code.

Burton has not filed an appeal of the citation thus far. But her suit said she does plan an appeal, but appeals at the state level are often long and that could cause her to be “frozen out of the legal process,” according to her suit.

Judge Milich said he issued the contempt citation because the U.S. Supreme Court banned political buttons in the courtroom in the 1997 case Berner v. Delahanty, where an attorney objected to a judge’s ordering him to take off a button for a political campaign.

In her lawsuit, Burton said the court’s dress code is unconstitutionally vague and that police officers are allowed to wear black tape over their badges as a sign of mourning for officers who have been killed in the line of duty, and they are not subjected to the same rules she was.

Burton also said in her suit that since she was cited by Judge Milich, the number of cases she has been appointed to in municipal court has decreased.

Besides asking that the federal court order both judges to cease their behavior, Burton also is asking for compensatory damages for pain and suffering, anguish and humiliation.

The case will be assigned to District Court Judge Sara Lioi.

The judge in Youngstown, Benita Pearson, recused herself from hearing the case.