A Brooklyn Supreme Court justice has been formally admonished by New York’s judicial watchdog after spending nearly two years trying to use her title to avoid paying $150 in sanitation fines.
The New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct announced Monday that Justice Katherine Levine, who has served on the bench in Kings County since 2008, repeatedly invoked her judicial status while fighting three minor trash violations before the city’s Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings, or OATH.
The commission found that Levine’s “unnecessary and repeated references to her judicial office created the appearance that she was inappropriately seeking special treatment.”
The trouble began in March 2024, when sanitation workers found a buildup of napkins, papers, egg cartons and other trash in the driveway of Levine’s Borough Park home, where she has lived since 1996. Rather than pay the $50 mail-in fine, Levine contested the ticket.
“i plead not guilty,” she wrote in an online submission ten days later. “I am a supreme Court Justice in Kings County and went to work at 10 am.”
OATH found her guilty anyway, but Levine did not pay, according to the commission. The following spring she received two more tickets, both for failing to put lids on her trash receptacles. She did not respond to either until that fall.
In an October 2025 voicemail to the administrative court, she identified herself by title and said, “I have trials every day in Supreme Court.” The commission said she made similar arguments on multiple occasions, including in an email sent from her official judicial account: “I cannot come down and sit in OATH for 10 hours as I am a trial judge in Supreme Court.”
By then, her original $50 fine had grown to a $650 balance because of missed hearings. In another message, Levine wrote, “I am a supreme court justice and I vacate default judgments all the time in the name of equity and justice.”
OATH responded that it does not offer settlements and that Levine “must follow OATH rules and protocols as everyone must do.” Levine then asked to speak with a supervisor, ending one email in capital letters: “HOW DO I PAY IT AND HOW MUCH IS IT.”
Commission administrator Robert Tembeckjian said the episode had implications beyond one judge’s trash cans.
“Invoking judicial office to avoid paying a fine undermines public confidence in the integrity of the judiciary and suggests that judges are exempt from rules that apply to everyone else,” Tembeckjian said. “The Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings was right not to give special treatment to a judge, and Judge Levine accepted responsibility for her conduct by agreeing an admonition was appropriate.”
The commission said Levine, who had a clean disciplinary record before this case, “openly and repeatedly expressed her remorse and embarrassment” and accepted the admonishment. It noted that she “recognizes that the gratuitous invocation of her judicial title was reasonably perceived at OATH as an attempt for a favorable adjudication of her summonses.”
Levine’s attorney, David Godosky, said she “regrets that she referenced her position while addressing a frustrating issue with a city agency,” adding that she was “candid and cooperative” throughout the proceedings.
The fines have since been paid, according to OATH records.
