On June 4, 2025, the Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission filed a formal complaint — FC No. 109 — against Judge Kirsten Nielsen Hartig of the 52nd District Court in Troy, Michigan. The complaint, the product of approximately five years of investigation, includes allegations that Judge Hartig withheld the results of a court-ordered psychological evaluation for six months and made false statements to the JTC about a complainant. The evaluation, conducted in late May 2024 and completed June 6, 2024, concluded that Judge Hartig was “unsafe to practice,” citing disruptive behavior and personality dysfunction. Clutch Justice was first to break the contents of that evaluation, discovering that the JTC had used cosmetic rather than secure redaction — text beneath the visual redaction block was machine-readable and accessible without technical tools. The JTC subsequently removed the complaint from its website. This is the original investigative report.
The Complaint: FC No. 109
Five years of investigation, continued misconduct allegations, and a court-ordered psychological evaluation concluding that a judge is “unsafe to practice” — that is what the Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission required before filing a formal complaint against Judge Kirsten Nielsen Hartig of the 52nd District Court in Troy, Michigan.
The complaint — designated FC No. 109 and filed June 4, 2025 — outlines multiple allegations. Two are of particular significance for the judicial accountability record.
The Psychological Evaluation: Ordered, Withheld, and Concealed
During the course of its investigation into Judge Hartig’s conduct, the JTC identified concerns about her mental health sufficient to warrant a psychological evaluation. On April 15, 2024, the Commission ordered her to undergo that evaluation at All Points North — a facility in Colorado, chosen and paid for by the Commission. The JTC’s choice of an out-of-state facility is notable: All Points North’s website lists no Michigan locations.
The structure of this arrangement warrants examination. A Commission investigating judicial misconduct ordered and paid for a psychological evaluation of the judge under investigation. That evaluation was provided exclusively to the subject of the investigation — not to the investigating body — and the subject was then permitted, for six months, to object to and delay releasing the results to the body that commissioned and paid for them. This is not a standard procedural arrangement in most investigative contexts. The Commission’s ability to investigate and act on its own concerns was subordinated to the subject’s ability to withhold evidence of those very concerns.
The False Statements Allegation
The second allegation of particular note in FC No. 109 is that Judge Hartig made false statements to the JTC about a complainant. Michigan Court Rules require judges to maintain standards of conduct that include honesty in dealings with the judicial oversight system. Making false statements about a person who filed a complaint — the person whose complaint triggered the investigation — raises the same concerns that false statements to any investigatory body raise: it undermines the integrity of the process and constitutes an independent violation distinct from whatever misconduct the original complaint alleged.
Clutch Justice First Report: The Redaction Failure
When the JTC filed FC No. 109, portions of the complaint appeared to be redacted — a standard practice for court documents containing sealed material. Clutch Justice’s review of the document at the digital layer level revealed that the redaction was cosmetic rather than secure.
While reviewing court-file materials related to the psychological evaluation, an apparent redaction was observed in the complaint. The visual presentation was consistent with a standard redaction — a black block obscuring underlying text.
Examination of the document at the digital layer level revealed that the text beneath the visible redaction was machine-readable. This indicated the redaction was cosmetic — a surface-level visual block — rather than a properly flattened or securely scrubbed file in which the underlying text has been permanently removed from the document’s data structure.
The redacted content could be accessed without specialized software: the underlying text was accessible by highlighting the apparent redaction with a standard cursor, copying the highlighted area, and pasting the result. No technical tools beyond a standard document reader and clipboard were required. The “blacked out” portion was visually opaque but digitally transparent.
Copies demonstrating that the redacted content was accessible were preserved, including screenshots and comparison files. Clutch Justice published a documented analysis of the machine-readable redaction issue. The publication timestamp predates subsequent mainstream coverage of the redaction failure.
A redaction that is cosmetic rather than secure is not a redaction — it is an instruction to the reader not to read the underlying content, accompanied by no actual mechanism preventing them from doing so. The JTC filed a public document with material it characterized as sealed, in a format that made the sealed material accessible to anyone who looked. The most significant content revealed — that the evaluation concluded Judge Hartig was “unsafe to practice” — was material the Commission itself had included in the complaint. The redaction failure exposed what the footnote itself acknowledged: the material was sealed “at the request of respondent pending a determination” of a challenge. The underlying content existed in the complaint. The redaction existed as a courtesy to the respondent, not as a secure information barrier. And it failed as even that.
The timeline of FC No. 109 raises structural questions about Michigan’s judicial accountability infrastructure that extend beyond Judge Hartig’s individual conduct. A five-year investigation before a formal complaint. A psychological evaluation provided exclusively to the subject of the investigation rather than to the investigating Commission. A six-month delay in the Commission receiving its own commissioned report, during which the judge continued to preside over cases. And a complaint filed with a redaction failure that exposed the very conclusion it was supposed to protect. Each of these facts represents a procedural gap in a system designed to hold judges accountable to the public. The gaps are the accountability story, independent of whatever the underlying investigation ultimately establishes.
Sources and Documents
Rita Williams, Michigan Judge Kirsten Nielsen Hartig Deemed “Unsafe to Practice,” Public Complaint Ensues, Clutch Justice (June 4, 2025), https://clutchjustice.com/2025/06/04/judge-kirsten-nielsen-hartig-unsafe-to-practice/.
Williams, R. (2025, June 4). Michigan Judge Kirsten Nielsen Hartig deemed “unsafe to practice,” public complaint ensues. Clutch Justice. https://clutchjustice.com/2025/06/04/judge-kirsten-nielsen-hartig-unsafe-to-practice/
Williams, Rita. “Michigan Judge Kirsten Nielsen Hartig Deemed ‘Unsafe to Practice,’ Public Complaint Ensues.” Clutch Justice, 4 June 2025, clutchjustice.com/2025/06/04/judge-kirsten-nielsen-hartig-unsafe-to-practice/.
Williams, Rita. “Michigan Judge Kirsten Nielsen Hartig Deemed ‘Unsafe to Practice,’ Public Complaint Ensues.” Clutch Justice, June 4, 2025. https://clutchjustice.com/2025/06/04/judge-kirsten-nielsen-hartig-unsafe-to-practice/.
