Seattle City Attorney’s Office says it's ending its year-long feud with municipal judge

The Seattle City Attorney’s office said it will once again allow a municipal court judge to hear criminal cases, after sidelining her for several months.

Last March the Seattle City Attorney’s office said in a statement they had “serious concerns” about Seattle Municipal Court Judge Pooja Vaddadi’s “conduct and rulings.”

City prosecutors said they would file so-called “affidavits of prejudice” to remove Judge Vaddadi from every criminal case going forward. (Attorneys routinely seek to remove judges from particular cases, but for the city attorney to deprive a judge of all criminal cases was unusual.)

The city attorney and municipal court adjudicate Seattle's criminal misdemeanors.

To balance out the municipal court’s workload, the court reassigned Vaddadi to review traffic and parking infractions. Vaddadi is a former public defender who began serving a four-year term at Seattle Municipal Court in January 2023.

But the city attorney’s office said at a court hearing Friday they had softened their position. When a judge asked a city prosecutor whether they are still seeking to remove Judge Vaddadi from all criminal cases the attorney, Ghazal Sharifi, said no.

“It’s my understanding that the municipal court is assigning criminal cases to Judge Vaddadi right now,” Sharifi said.

Tim Robinson, a spokesperson for Seattle City Attorney Ann Davison, said the office’s new head of the criminal division wanted to “find a way forward” after the dispute. He said they will no longer bar Judge Vaddadi as a matter of course but will look at each case individually.

Lisa Foster, a spokesperson for Seattle Municipal Court, confirmed that the city attorney has now allowed some cases to be assigned to Judge Vaddadi, but said they aren’t yet enough to restore Vaddadi to her previous role.

“The court has seen cases filed without the affidavit. Cases are being assigned into Judge Vaddadi's courtroom. It is still a small number of cases, so she has not yet resumed seeing a full calendar in her courtroom and her current assignment remains in infractions,” Foster said.

On Friday, King County Superior Court Judge Brian McDonald dismissed a lawsuit filed by the ACLU against the Seattle City Attorney, which claimed that city prosecutors were misusing their discretion by effectively unseating an elected judge. McDonald said the ability to remove a judge from specific cases is available as a matter of right to each party.

“This isn’t a decision on the merits of what this city attorney was doing with respect to this judge,” he said.

Meanwhile, a private citizen, Bennett Haselton, said he filed a grievance with the Washington State Bar Association because he said the city attorney made false claims about Vaddadi's record.

Haselton said the city attorney said Judge Vaddadi "'dismissed a case' when she never dismissed it, they said she 'found a defendant was in compliance with treatment' when Judge Vaddadi explicitly declined to make that finding."

The bar association dismissed the grievance. Haselton said he has filed an appeal.