From Cooper-Keel v. State, decided today by Magistrate Judge Sally Berens (W.D. Mich.):
Defendant Kengis is currently the Chief Judge of the Allegan County Circuit Court. Defendant Kengis presided over Cooper-Keel's previous divorce case. During that proceeding, Cooper-Keel moved to disqualify Defendant Kengis from deciding the case, but Kengis denied the motion. That ruling was subsequently affirmed by the Michigan Court of Appeals.
Cooper-Keel alleges that on September 7, 2021, he made the following comment on the Circuit Court's Facebook page referring to Kengis, "Is he going to help rig some more circuit court trials in that crooked ass sh*thole of a circuit court? https://www. google.com/amp/s/amp.hollandsentinel.com/amp/114417676." The article Cooper-Keel referenced in his comments reported on a criminal case in which the defendant was granted a new trial after it was discovered that then-Chief Judge Margaret Bakker had sent the prosecutor emails regarding the case during the trial. Cooper-Keel further alleges that on February 22, 2022, after Defendant Kengis became Chief Judge, the Circuit Court posted an announcement on its Facebook page introducing the recently-hired director of the Friend of the Court. Cooper-Keel made a comment in response to the post similar to the comment he had made on September 7, 2021. Later in the day, the comments were hidden, and the post no longer indicated that comments had been made. In contrast, Cooper-Keel alleges, his September 21, 2021 comment was never deleted, hidden, or censored in any way.
The Circuit Court's official Facebook page was created on December 18, 2018 …. The intended purpose of the Facebook page was to inform the public about court events and news, not to interact or debate matters with the public…. However, users or followers had the ability to interact with posts, which continued from December 2018 through October 2021. Mr. Dulac [the Page Administrator and court employee] thus was required to review each individual post on the Circuit Court's Facebook page for user comments.
When Defendant Kengis became Chief Judge in January 2022, he learned that Mr. Dulac was devoting time to manually reviewing each individual post on the Circuit Court's Facebook page, which took substantial time away from his other job duties.
