When a Judge Tells You to Go Be Political
Seven and ½ months. That is how long a single ethics complaint has been waiting to be screened by the City of Nashua’s Ethics Review Committee. Not read. Not decided. Not ruled on. Just sitting. The only complaint. Waiting. And when I finally brought that failure before Superior Court Judge Schulman, he looked at the evidence, acknowledged the problem, and then told me the remedy was not his to give.
Being turned away from the courthouse with a referral to “the political process” is not just my story. It happens whenever a court acknowledges wrongdoing and then passes the ball on the remedy. That is becoming a patterned failure in New Hampshire Courts and most certainly in Nashua.
What Happened
On September 14, 2025, I filed an ethics complaint against a Nashua Alderman who I believe leaked confidential information from a sealed meeting into his public newsletter. The claim fits squarely in the ethics rules. The city’s ordinance requires a hearing within 30 days after that. It uses the word “shall” over fifty times.
Seven and ½ months later, my complaint has never been touched. Meetings were canceled. The committee collapsed. When I filed suit, injunctive relief on five claims, the city reconstituted the board and asked the court to dismiss the case. On March 30, 2026, Judge Schulman agreed, ruling I lacked standing and pointing me toward “the political process”. He only reviewed one claim and never considered the other five, claiming “mostly likely” they would be moot without ever reviewing them.
The Standing Problem Is a Judicial Choice, Not an Inevitability
Judge Schulman compared the ERC to the bar’s Professional Conduct Committee, concluding that ethics complainants have no legally cognizable stake in discipline proceedings. The case he cited involved someone who had received a hearing and was challenging the findings.
I have never had a screening or hearing. I cannot get through the door. Apparently, Bush, Bolton and Sullivan decided in a non-meeting to shut it down. Treating someone who was never heard the same as someone who was heard and lost is not neutral standing doctrine. It’s a Judge applying a standing doctrine to retaliate and discriminate against citizens who don’t align with the City’s viewpoints. The Judge backs the City to disregard complaints from citizens simply based on their look or name, without ever reading the complaint. Nashua has had a long history of corrupt Judges and the pattern continues.
New Hampshire courts have the tools to draw a distinction here. Mandatory language, “shall screen”, “shall hear”, “shall act”, is the declaration that these timelines are not optional. Refusing to enforce them because no single citizen can prove sufficient personal harm is a policy choice, and one that invites viewpoint discrimination, not a legal inevitability. It tells local governments that mandatory obligations are consequence-free, and it leaves the door open for politics, bias, and income to determine who actually gets heard. What is happening in Nashua’s Ethics Committee is happening in the Courts. The law doesn’t serve the citizens any longer, instead it punishes them.
The Insulting Language – “Use the Political Process”
Nashua is one of the most economically significant cities in New Hampshire. Its population and location generate substantial state revenue. Yet for decades, it has operated with a striking indifference to citizen rights, with well-documented corruption. Written rules are broken without consequence. The courts have enabled this pattern rather than corrected it, and the result is a system where citizens do not stand on equal footing with their own city before a judge. The scales are structurally tipped.
The matters I have pursued through information requests and legal action involve serious allegations, malfeasance, unjust enrichment, and potential misuse of federal funds. In my experience, the moment those issues surface in a courtroom, the judicial response is retreat. Not engagement. Not scrutiny. Retreat.
New Hampshire has a prominent political figure who grew up in Nashua, a woman who rose to become the state’s first female Attorney General, a United States Senator, and now its Governor. She holds significant political power. If someone of that stature and reach has been unable to meaningfully alter the Democratic leadership’s conduct in this city, a court that tells a private citizen to “use the political process” is not offering a remedy. It is offering an insult.
When courts and municipal governments operate in alignment against the citizens they are meant to serve, what results is a closed system, politically oppressive, legally impenetrable, and increasingly beyond the reach of ordinary participation. History is not kind to systems like this. They rarely correct themselves quietly, and decent people bear the cost of waiting for them to break.
To be dismissed from a courtroom on a matter with clear legal basis, told to go be political instead, is not justice. It is abandonment. A judge who does that is not accountable to the law, and he is not accountable to the people he is sworn to serve. He is unworthy of a seat on the bench.
What the Judge Saw — and What He Did With It
Judge Schulman was not indifferent. He told the city from the bench: “Don’t call me to a meeting if you want it in the trash.” He saw the foot dragging. He named it. And then he dismissed the case anyway. For over 10 weeks, the ERC membership meets the quorum requirements, but no hearing has been scheduled. It met the quorum requirement from September to December, until members resigned apparently due to Chairman Bush’s failed leadership.
That gap between what a judge sees and what a judge will remedy, is where judicial reform must focus. A court that acknowledges institutional bad faith but declines to act is not a neutral arbiter. It is an active participant in that bad faith; not a bridge to justice, but a wall on the city’s side. Standing doctrine becomes the mechanism that dresses misconduct up as a procedural question and walks away.
The irony is inescapable and it is documented. At the March 30, 2026 hearing, I told Judge Schulman: “I happen to think ethics is a really important topic right now, not just in the municipality, but all through the court system. And what’s the purpose of having an ethics committee if you can never get a complaint looked at?” The Judge responded: “I agree that ethics — I don’t think that anybody would disagree — is really important, and I would agree with the words “right now.”” He agreed with the premise. He agreed with the urgency. He agreed ethics matters. And then he dismissed the case. A judge who concedes that ethics oversight is critically important, and in the same breath refuses to enforce the law that makes it possible, has not stayed neutral. He has made a choice and that choice has a cost that citizens, not judges, are left to pay.
This is not unique to Nashua. For the better part of a decade, its courts have consistently resolved ambiguity in favor of the city. That judicial capture does not happen all at once. It accumulates, deference by deference, until citizens with legitimate grievances are turned away at the courthouse door and told to go be political. The power imbalance they face was built in courtrooms. It will not be dismantled at a board meeting.
What Reform Must Address
New Hampshire’s accountability laws are only as strong as the courts willing to enforce them. Right now, no reliable judicial mechanism exists for a citizen to compel a local government to follow its own mandatory procedural obligations through it’s ordinancs and state statutes. That gap needs to be closed.
Three reforms would help.
Citizens filing complaints under ordinances with mandatory timelines should have standing to enforce those timelines. Mandatory language should be enough to establish a cognizable legal interest. Legislation was created and must be enforced.
When a government body has one pending matter, a full membership, and still cannot meet in two months on a seven month old complaint, courts should treat that as a justiciable failure. Injunctive relief should be available without requiring proof of individual harm.
Judicial training should address the impact of standing doctrine on accountability cases. When courts consistently avoid hearing citizen challenges to government non-performance, that pattern deserves scrutiny not as criticism of individual judges, but as a question about whether courts are fulfilling their constitutional role.
What Comes Next
I am appealing Judge Schulman’s ruling. The New Hampshire Supreme Court should address what this case makes unavoidable: whether mandatory language in a state statute and municipal ordinance creates an enforceable right for complainants to have their complaints processed, involving personal harm, and whether courts must act when that processing is indefinitely withheld.
I bring this not only for my own complaint, seven months waiting for a screening that should have happened last October. I bring it for the next person who files an ethics complaint in New Hampshire and deserves to know whether mandatory means anything. And the person after that. And the one after that. New Hampshire’s transparency laws are a promise. Courts exist to keep it.
I disagree with Judge Schulman’s ruling. A court that sees the problem, names it from the bench, and dismisses the case anyway has not resolved anything. It has only delayed the reckoning. A judge who protects the City from its own wrongdoing is not a referee. He is a player.
