A San Francisco Superior Court judge has formally agreed to discontinue his longstanding practice of speaking and requiring the use of a notorious racial slur during criminal court proceedings. The reversal marks a significant shift in courtroom decorum after years of friction between the bench and local defense attorneys over the explicit recitation of offensive language on the official record.
The policy change comes just days after a published report by the San Francisco Chronicle detailed the controversial courtroom habits of Judge Harry Dorfman. Following the public disclosure, court leadership announced that Dorfman would abandon his previous stance and adopt the standard judicial convention of substituting the slur with accepted alternative phrasing.
In an official statement released by the court administration, led by Presiding Judge Rochelle East, the San Francisco Superior Court acknowledged the profound historical harm and weight associated with the slur in any environment. The statement emphasized that while maintaining an accurate verbatim transcript is critical to legal proceedings, judicial officers must also exercise sound discretion, even in circumstances where no formal statutory or ethical violation has been established.
Dorfman, a 69-year-old white jurist, previously worked as a deputy district attorney in San Francisco and as a law professor before being appointed to the bench by former Governor Jerry Brown in 2013. For several years, he had broken with conventional judicial standards by explicitly vocalizing the slur rather than using euphemisms when quoting case evidence.
Across the broader judicial system, judges and attorneys typically reference the term as the "n-word" when presenting testimony or evidence to illuminate a defendant's or witness's motives and demeanor. Dorfman, however, maintained since at least 2020 that fully stating the epithet was an indispensable requirement for factual accuracy and for properly assessing the mindset of individuals involved in criminal matters.
The practice generated intense friction during courtroom hearings, including a case that occurred last November involving a criminal defendant undergoing mental health treatment who had allegedly directed threats toward law enforcement officers and others. During the proceeding, Deputy Public Defender Elly Leggatt referenced the client's statements while intentionally omitting the explicit slur.
According to a transcript of the hearing, Dorfman intervened immediately to correct the defense attorney, reciting the explicit threats and the slur in full from the bench. When Leggatt objected and formally requested that the judge refrain from speaking the slur, characterizing it as inappropriate for the courtroom, Dorfman rejected the objection, stating that factual evidence does not cast offense or insults, before ordering the defendant held without bail.
In another legal proceeding, when a defense attorney noted that a witness had used the euphemism during testimony, Dorfman instructed the lawyer to utter the actual slur directly when questioning the witness. The judge insisted at the time that the court must handle evidentiary information exactly as it occurs in real life.
The repeated use of the epithet led San Francisco Public Defender Mano Raju to file a formal disciplinary complaint against Dorfman in 2022 with California's Commission on Judicial Performance. The filing sought an official public censure or admonition alongside a mandate for the judge to undergo additional professional training regarding racial sensitivity and courtroom management.
The state oversight commission concluded its review in 2024 by issuing a brief, one-sentence decision that dismissed the matter without taking disciplinary action or providing an explanatory opinion. Raju's office subsequently petitioned the San Francisco Superior Court to address the matter internally, but court administrators initially declined to intervene.
Following the court's sudden policy announcement this week, Raju's office voiced lingering frustration that corrective steps were taken only after the situation received widespread public and media attention. Defense officials expressed ongoing concern over the judge's past insistence on using the slur despite the availability of conventional alternatives, adding that they intend to closely monitor proceedings to ensure the new commitment is upheld.
The resolution was praised by retired legal figures who had voiced strong objections to Dorfman's courtroom conduct. Retired Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge LaDoris Hazard Cordell, who became the first Black female judge in Northern California upon her 1982 appointment by Governor Brown, characterized the issue not merely as a matter concerning the Black community, but as a fundamental human rights issue.
Drawing a comparison to Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland," Cordell criticized the idea that a judge could unilaterally redefine a deeply offensive term under the guise of evidentiary neutrality. She noted that, unlike the literary figure Humpty Dumpty who claimed words mean only what the speaker chooses, no individual possesses the authority to diminish the clear and ugly history embedded in the racial slur.
Jeremy Fogel, a former state and federal judge who presently serves as the director of the Judicial Institute at UC Berkeley Law School, likewise described the court's announcement as a positive resolution to the protracted dispute. Dorfman himself did not provide comment regarding the announcement or his agreement to alter his courtroom practices.
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