A sitting federal judge from Bay City has been formally charged with drunken driving under Michigan’s enhanced “super drunk” statute after a crash near his northern Michigan vacation home last fall. The case raises major questions about accountability for members of the judiciary and the integrity of the legal system when judges themselves face criminal charges.
Case Reference: Michigan v. Thomas L. Ludington, 90th District Court, Emmet County — 2025-25-0564-SD (trial set Feb. 27, 2026).
Discipline Summary
U.S. District Judge Thomas L. Ludington, 72, who presides over the Eastern District of Michigan’s Northern Division based in Bay City, has been charged with operating a vehicle while intoxicated and operating with a blood–alcohol content of 0.17 or higher, qualifying as a “super drunk” offense under Michiganlaw.
…And the case continued as he was active on the bench.
Applicable Law
- Michigan Super Drunk Law: Applies when a driver’s blood–alcohol content (BAC) is 0.17% or greater, more than twice the legal limit of 0.08% for adults and carries enhanced penalties, including up to 180 days in jail and a license suspension of up to one year.
Underlying Conduct
On October 3, 2025, Ludington crashed a 2019 Cadillac CT6 on a rural road in Springvale Township, near Petoskey, striking two traffic signs and deploying the vehicle’s airbag. Law enforcement determined his BAC exceeded 0.17%, meeting the statutory definition of “super drunk.” He was arrested by Michigan State Police and released on a $500 bond.
Ludington pleaded not guilty and is scheduled for further proceedings: a February 9 status conference and a jury trial set for February 27, 2026 in 90th District Court (Emmet County).
Judicial Position and Response
Despite the pending criminal charges, Ludington has continued to hear federal cases in the Eastern District of Michigan. It is not publicly clear whether he informed his chief judge or faced any internal judicial discipline following his arrest.
Ludington was appointed to the federal bench by President George W. Bush and confirmed in 2006. Prior to his federal appointment, he served for more than a decade as a Michigan circuit court judge.
The Charge Selection Problem
What stands out most to me in this case is not just the conduct. Obviously clutch has covered it’s fair share of drunk driving cases by people in power. What bothers me, is yet again, the charge selection.
Michigan law gives prosecutors wide discretion (way too much in my opinion ) in how impaired-driving cases are charged. That discretion is not neutral. It operates inside a system where status, credibility, and institutional proximity matter, whether acknowledged or not.
Here, the conduct alleged includes:
- A blood–alcohol level more than twice the legal limit
- A single-vehicle crash
- Property damage
- Airbag deployment
For many defendants without institutional protection, this fact pattern often triggers charge stacking or escalation. Prosecutors routinely look to aggravating factors to justify felony exposure. Those factors can include endangerment, crash severity, prior record assumptions, or discretionary interpretations of risk.
In practice, people with fewer resources and less credibility before the court often face:
- Felony OWI charges when crashes are involved
- Additional counts tied to “endangering the public”
- More aggressive pretrial conditions
- Immediate collateral consequences
Here, the charging posture is significantly and disturbingly restrained. The case proceeds as a misdemeanor “super drunk” offense, despite circumstances that, for ordinary defendants, frequently result in harsher treatment.
This is not an argument that felony charges are legally required. It is an observation about how discretion is deployed.
Discretion is the quietest form of power in the criminal legal system. It is rarely written down. It is exercised upstream, before the public ever sees a docket. And it disproportionately benefits those who already occupy positions of authority and power within the system.
When a judge is charged, the system bends toward minimal exposure. But when an ordinary person is charged, the system always seems to test how far it can stretch.
Again and again, that disparity is not theoretical; it is purely structural and once again, the system is working as designed.
Fit-Bench Considerations: Age, Cognition, and Judicial Capacity
This case also implicates questions the system rarely asks out loud: judicial capacity and cognitive fitness. At 72 years old, Judge Ludington occupies a demographic where age-related changes in reaction time, impulse control, judgment under stress, and executive functioning are statistically relevant. Alcohol use does not exist in isolation from cognition. It compounds impairment, especially in older adults, where the same blood-alcohol level produces greater cognitive and motor disruption than in younger individuals.
Fit-Bench analysis is not about punishment or stigma. It is about risk assessment and institutional responsibility. Judges are entrusted with sustained attention, rapid legal reasoning, emotional regulation, and life-altering decision-making. When credible indicators arise, such as impaired driving, high BAC, and crash behavior, the question is not simply whether criminal liability attaches. The question is whether capacity oversight mechanisms exist at all, and whether the judiciary is willing to apply them internally with the same rigor it applies to defendants appearing before it.
Ignoring cognitive and age-related risk factors does not preserve dignity. It shifts risk onto the public and onto litigants who have no choice but to submit to judicial authority. A system serious about accountability would treat this moment not as an embarrassment to manage, but as a signal to evaluate whether lifetime judicial power without routine capacity review is compatible with public safety and judicial legitimacy.
Fit-Bench Scorecard: Judge Thomas L. Ludington
Fit-Bench Scorecard
Subject: Thomas L. Ludington Jurisdiction: U.S. District Court (E.D. Michigan, Northern Division) / State OWI case in Emmet County District Court
Role: Judge
Review Window: Oct. 3, 2025 – Jan. 2026 (public reporting window; pending proceedings)
| Category | Status | Notes / Observable Indicators |
|---|---|---|
| Category 1: Cognitive Tracking | ● ● ● | Crash event combined with alleged high-BAC impairment is a functional reliability signal. Age (72) increases relevance of routine capacity screening without asserting a medical conclusion. |
| Category 2: Legal Accuracy | ● ● ● | Not assessed in this screen. Requires a structured audit of rulings/opinions for error patterns, reversals, or transcript indicators. |
| Category 3: Impulse Control | ● ● ● | Alleged decision to drive while impaired at a level reported as “super drunk” indicates high-consequence risk-taking and impaired judgment at the time of the event. |
| Category 4: Neutrality and Bias Risk | ● ● ● | Not directly assessed from the reported conduct. Would require case-sampling review for disparate language, credibility weighting, or consistent one-sided deference. |
| Category 5: Procedural Control | ● ● ● | Public reporting suggests continued docket activity while charges are pending; interim safeguards (temporary reassignment, disclosure memo, or recusal review) are not publicly confirmed. |
| Category 6: Health and Safety Risk Flags | ● ● ● | Public-safety event involving alleged intoxication and a crash. Even without injury allegations, this is a high-salience safety flag that typically triggers enhanced oversight in other safety-sensitive roles. |
| Category 7: Resistance to Correction | ● ● ● | Not enough public record to score as red. However, the absence of visible institutional corrective steps (if accurate) is a governance concern that warrants follow-up review. |
| Category 8: Fiscal and Economic Competence | ● ● ● | Not assessed. Requires review of courtroom management patterns (continuances, fee practices, sanctions posture, time-to-resolution, etc.). |
Overall Flag: ● Green ● Yellow ● Red
Summary: Overall flag is Red based on a public-safety impairment event plus age-relevant capacity considerations, with unresolved transparency about interim safeguards.
Note: Fit-Bench is a performance screen, not a diagnosis. It identifies repeatable, observable risk patterns that may warrant confidential fitness review.
Sources (public reporting): MLive (Jan. 2026) · Midland Daily News (syndicated) · Bloomberg Law
Why This Matters
1. Accountability at the Top of the Legal System
Judges hold immense power over people’s liberty, rights, and property. When a federal judge is charged with a crime, especially one involving public safety like drunken driving, it tests public confidence in the principle that no one is above the law. Because clearly, some people are.
2. Transparency and Judicial Conduct
The slow emergence of this case nearly four months after the crash, and questions about whether Ludington notified court leadership, highlight significant systemic gaps in transparency and judicial self-regulation. Clear protocols for reporting and discipline are essential in maintaining what little trust there is in the judiciary.
3. Equal Justice Under the Law
Ludington’s case forces a practical examination of whether members of the judiciary experience the same legal consequences as everyday citizens. Ensuring equal application of criminal laws, including drunk driving statutes, is not just legal theory; it is foundational to justice.
Clutch Will Be Watching
As proceedings march on, Clutch will keep an on eye the situation. I also want to make clear that my beef here is not about punishment for punishment’s sake. Nor is this at all about one entity, or one judge. We need to accept that this isn’t just a small county problem; judicial accountability is a statewide crisis stemming entirely from systemic design.
It is about the justice system once again failing to apply its own rules consistently, regardless of who is standing at the center of the courtroom. When a federal judge is charged, the public is asked to trust that discretion, restraint, and procedural fairness are being applied evenly. That trust depends on transparency and equal treatment, not silence or deference. If the system expects legitimacy, it must demonstrate that accountability does not thin out as power concentrates.
Justice cannot ask for faith while constantly exempting its own from consequences. The system should not selectively ruin some lives and spare others.
