It is no surprise that Clutch Justice has been tracking personnel changes and internal dynamics at the Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission (JTC) closely for years. With the announced retirement of Lynn Helland effective January 31, 2026, just ahead of the high-profile public trial involving Kirsten Nielsen Hartig, questions are emerging about patterns in how the Commission has handled internal leadership and external pressures.
What’s striking is not just the timing, but the historical echoes from nearly a decade ago.
A Troubled Precedent
In 2016, Paul J. Fischer, then the Executive Director and General Counsel of the JTC, filed a lawsuit alleging he was terminated after pushing for misconduct proceedings against Oakland County Judge Lisa Gorcyca whose conduct (including the outrageous 17-day detention of children for contempt) had gone viral and triggered widespread criticism. Fischer’s complaint claimed that his recommendation to pursue a formal complaint was met with resistance from commissioners and ultimately led to his ouster.
Inexplicably, Gorcyca remains on the bench today.
Fischer’s lawsuit detailed a sequence in which his push for a formal complaint escalated internal hostility and culminated in his abrupt firing after a closed executive session.
That episode, which occurred under a previous Commission leadership configuration, remains one of the rare documented instances where an agency leader publicly alleged retaliation for attempting to uphold the Commission’s disciplinary mandate. Judge David Sawyer was chairperson at the time.
A Familiar Pattern: In re Gorcyca (2017)
- In In re Gorcyca, the Michigan Supreme Court reviewed disciplinary proceedings brought by the Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission against a sitting family court judge following a highly publicized contempt hearing involving children.
- The JTC found that Judge Lisa Gorcyca engaged in judicial misconduct by:
- Holding a child in contempt of an order that did not legally apply to him
- Making demeaning and inappropriate comments toward children on the record
- Exhibiting poor judicial temperament during proceedings involving vulnerable parties
- The JTC recommended a 30-day suspension without pay and assessment of costs.
- The Michigan Supreme Court agreed misconduct occurred, but significantly reframed the case:
- The Court distinguished between judicial misconduct and legal error made in good faith
- It rejected portions of the JTC’s findings that treated erroneous rulings as intentional misconduct
- It emphasized that not every serious mistake on the bench warrants punitive discipline
- The Court reduced the sanction to a public censure, rejecting both suspension and cost assessments.
- The decision underscored a recurring tension in JTC cases:
- Misconduct is acknowledged
- Structural or competency-related failures are minimized
- Sanctions are calibrated downward once review reaches the Supreme Court
- Notably, the case relied heavily on transcripts and courtroom conduct, not contemporaneous video evidence, significantly limiting the record to what was formally preserved rather than what may have been observable in real time.
Why this matters now:
The Gorcyca decision illustrates how judicial discipline in Michigan has historically addressed visible misconduct while stopping short of grappling with broader questions of fitness, oversight, and early intervention. That pattern echoes in current cases, where access to objective records and monitoring frameworks could alter outcomes long before crisis forces action.
A New Leadership Era
Today, the Commission’s Chairperson is Thomas J. Ryan, a seasoned Michigan lawyer with deep ties to the Oakland County legal community. Mr. Ryan has been a JTC commissioner since 2005 and was elected Chairperson in late 2024, marking the second time he has served in that leadership role.
Interestingly, annual reports from that time capture that Thomas Ryan was in fact on the commission during the 2016 episode, giving one plenty of reason to pause and examine the circumstances.
As a result, Ryan’s long tenure in private practice and bar leadership, including past service as president of the State Bar of Michigan and leadership roles in the Oakland County Bar Association, positions him as a figure deeply embedded in the state’s legal establishment.
Naturally, this raises one specific question: is Chairperson Ryan protecting one of “his own”?
The Commission’s current leadership remains responsible for navigating both an unprecedented volume of public cases and the structural constraints inherent in Michigan’s judicial accountability statutes.
I reached out to Chairperson Ryan as well as the JTC for comment and am awaiting a response.
Structural Tensions, Persistent Questions
What binds these two eras, Fischer’s ouster and Helland’s pending departure, is less a personal saga and more a structural one: the persistent tension between the Commission’s disciplinary role and the internal, professional, and political forces that surround it.
These tensions are real and documented:
- The Fischer lawsuit paints a picture of internal resistance when disciplinary action became highly public and controversial.
- The JTC’s leadership continues to be drawn from the same exact legal networks that participate in the courts and bar associations it oversees, a reality that invites scrutiny and demands transparency.
Clutch Justice does not make assertions about hidden motives or conspiracies. But the recurrence of leadership turnover at critical junctures, especially when disciplinary scrutiny becomes public and intense, is a deeply troubling pattern worth examining.
I plan to write to representatives to request investigation on the matter, and encourage you to do the same.
Why This Matters
The Judicial Tenure Commission exists to uphold the integrity of Michigan’s courts. That mandate requires not only internal commitment but also structural safeguards that protect the Commission’s work from outsized influence, internal retaliation, or perceptions of capture.
If history is repeating, even in faint echoes, the lesson for policymakers and the public is clear: Michigan’s judicial accountability system demands statutory modernization, not just managerial changes.
Modernizing the JTC’s governing law would bolster its independence, clarify its disciplinary mandate, and reduce the risk that institutional momentum, rather than impartial evaluation, is what actually shapes outcomes.
Patterns often reveal themselves not in isolated events, but in how institutions respond to pressure points over time. Michigan’s judicial accountability system has seen leadership turnover in the midst of public controversy before. Today’s leadership and statutory framework will determine whether this moment becomes a repeat or a turning point.
As this story continues to unfold, Clutch Justice will remain on it with full reporting and analysis.
The Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission is the state body responsible for investigating complaints of judicial misconduct and prosecuting discipline cases against judges for violations of the Michigan Code of Judicial Conduct.
The In re Gorcyca decision demonstrates a recurring pattern in how misconduct allegations are handled in Michigan courts, including distinctions between legal error and true misconduct, and the limited role of traditional records in evaluating judicial behavior — issues mirrored in current cases where lack of objective documentation delayed accountability.
Courtroom video and structured cognitive health monitoring could provide objective, contemporaneous records of judicial behavior, allowing earlier detection of problematic conduct or cognitive decline and preventing patterns of harm that are otherwise only revealed long after the fact.
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