The Arapahoe County judge who resigned last week after allegations of racist behavior and other workplace misconduct had a much broader set of accusations against her than the Colorado Supreme Court originally disclosed.

A statement of charges from the Colorado Commission on Judicial Discipline revealed probable cause existed to initiate formal proceedings against District Court Judge Natalie T. Chase for violating multiple professional standards. On April 16, the Supreme Court censured Chase and accepted her resignation after she stipulated to using the N-word in front of a Black court employee, directed her office staff to perform personal assignments and called a fellow judge a derogatory name.

But the complaints against Chase encompassed several incidents beyond the Court’s narrative. In early 2020, Chase drove two 18th Judicial District employees to Pueblo for a work event. On the way back, Chase mentioned that a minor relative had gotten in trouble for saying the N-word at school. Chase, who is white, allegedly used the N-word “at least seven or eight times” in asking why Black people could use the word but white people could not.

One of the employees in the car, who was Black, “felt she was being interrogated as if she were a representative for all Black people,” according to the statement of charges dated March 9 of this year.

Subsequently, Chase was in her courtroom and sitting on the bench when she again brought up the minor relative’s use of the N-word at school. In the presence of others, Chase used the word “numerous times.” Her clerk reportedly told the judge later that “the N-word should never be used in any context,” and asked her to refrain from using it.

(Although the statement of charges provided the full names of the employees who witnessed Chase’s conduct, Colorado Politics is withholding their identities given their status as potential whistleblowers.)

Under the Colorado Rules of Judicial Discipline, all proceedings against a judge are confidential unless the commission files a recommendation for sanctions with the Supreme Court, as it did in this case. Only then do the recommendation and related proceedings become public. The handling of complaints deemed to have merit approximates the procedure for civil court cases.

Shandea J. Sergent, a lead state public defender in Jefferson County, speaking for herself and not on behalf of her office, expressed surprise that the complaint against Chase had gotten to the public stage. Nevertheless, she believed the type of conduct at issue was not isolated to one Colorado judge.

“No one forces you to be a judge. You’re taking an oath and agreeing to be held at a higher standard of care,” Sergent said. “You’re agreeing that some of these commentaries that she believes were appropriate is not something you get to entertain, even if you did in a previously timeline.”

Chase is a 2014 appointee of then-Gov. John Hickenlooper, whom 77% of voters in Arapahoe, Douglas, Elbert and Lincoln counties retained in 2016. But since then, she accumulated other complaints about her behavior in the workplace, from the minor to the egregious.

For instance, the statement noted the judge allegedly asked a lawyer appearing before her to help with the parental controls on her son’s computer at the bench. Chase also shared her personal and family matters with her staff, to the point that they felt they were her “therapists.”

In 2019, Chase reportedly became “upset” when she received judicial performance reviews from lawyers, and began asking attorneys individually what they wrote about her, “even though she knew the judicial reviews were filled out anonymously.”

“It’s totally improper,” responded Chris Melonakis, a retired judge in the neighboring 17th Judicial District and a former judicial performance commission member in Adams County. “The inference is, ‘if you wrote something negative about me, there’s going to be retaliation.’ It’s a form of intimidation.”

Had she not offered her resignation, Chase would have faced voters for retention in 2022.

Although the Supreme Court noted Chase had directed her law clerk to research a “personal family legal issue that was unrelated to the Judge’s official case load,” the statement of charges revealed the nature of the project. The judge allegedly assigned the clerk to investigate teachers’ and principals’ immunity from lawsuit because Chase had planned to sue her son’s school.

Another clerk allegedly received the task of editing an email intended for the cheerleading coach of Chase’s daughter, and editing other emails to her son’s school. The discipline commission noted this behavior would violate the rule against judges using their offices to advance their own personal or economic interests.

Finally, in the category of “un-judicial behavior,” Chase reportedly closed a hearing by wishing everyone a “Happy Father’s Day.” The quip came after she had just terminated a father’s parental rights. The episode, the judicial discipline commission alleged, showed Chase “did not act dignified or courteously.”

Ann Roan of the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar worried the Supreme Court’s public disclosure of the reasons for Chase’s resignation might inadvertently set a threshold against which to measure other judicial misconduct. As a consequence, judges may fly below the radar if their behavior is less obviously inappropriate.

“I fear that the message of the Court’s opinion is that unless you have a judge who repeatedly uses the N-word, nothing’s going to happen to that judge,” she said. “And that shouldn’t be the only set of circumstances in which discipline is actually given out.”

Chase’s attorney had no comment on the charges. The Judicial Department has already advertised the vacancy for Chase’s district court seat.