Britt J. Simon was suspended as municipal court judge after he yelled at truant students and threatened to have them deported. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
A municipal court judge suspended last year for threatening truant students with deportation told a judicial disciplinary committee Wednesday that he felt “powerless” when he faced “flat” teenagers in court and probably will dismiss truancy cases going forward.
Britt J. Simon told members of the Advisory Committee on Judicial Conduct, the panel weighing his fate, that he yelled at the teens and their parents during three separate truancy hearings in Bound Brook in August 2024 and January 2025 because he felt “absolute frustration.”
“I had no idea what to do with them,” Simon said.
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Several members of the panel chimed in to ask if Simon felt any remorse for threatening the teens with deportation and how he would handle truancy cases in the future.
Simon responded that truancy cases should be handled by family court instead of municipal court, and that he likely will dismiss those that come before him, particularly when parents can show they have not shirked their parental duties.
“If there’s already been the revelation that the parent has been doing everything they can, yeah, it would have to be dismissed,” Simon said.
A committee member asked Simon when he concluded such cases ought to be dismissed.
“Probably about the same time that the complaint was brought against me” last July, Simon responded.
Wednesday was the second day Simon pled his case before the panel at the Richard J. Hughes Justice Complex in Trenton, after his first hearing in January ran so long the committee continued it until this week. Wednesday’s hearing similarly stretched on, until the panel’s chair directed attorneys to skip their closing summations and instead file them, as well as their recommendations for discipline, in writing by April 15.
Simon was booted off the bench in February 2025 for three incidents in which he grilled students and their parents about their immigration status.
In one case, he warned a 14-year-old girl from El Salvador that he would personally alert immigration enforcement officers to pick her up if she missed another day of school. He told a 16-year-old boy from El Salvador his truancy would make him a “beggar piece of garbage” and that he would have child-protective workers remove him from his home and investigate his mother.
“Look at your mother, get ready to say goodbye to her. Go ahead. Look at her. Look at her now. You want to say goodbye to her? Because once you’re deported, you’re gone and you can’t come back again,” Simon barked at the boy. “Get out of my courtroom.”
Maureen G. Bauman, the committee’s disciplinary counsel, said Simon’s threats and “abrasive demeanor” violated the dignified, fair, and patient manner required of jurists and could have created the appearance of bias.
Simon has blamed the court system for not adequately training him in how to handle truancy cases and conceded Wednesday that his behavior on the bench was “horribly unpleasant.”
“I was wrong. I get it,” he said.
Still, he noted, his approach resulted in a “positive outcome.”
“There were kids that had come before me, and they were showing up to school,” he said. “It was improving their attendance.”
A decision will likely take months.
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