AUGUSTA, Maine — After Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows got national attention and Republican backlash for her decision to deem former President Donald Trump ineligible for the 2024 primary ballot, the spotlight will shift to a judge.
It is rare for Maine’s mostly apolitical judges to be pulled into partisan battles. Superior Court Justice Michaela Murphy has waded into politics before because she is based in the state capital of Augusta. She is now scheduled to rule within a week on Trump’s appeal of Bellows’ decision.
Murphy was appointed to the bench by Democratic Gov. John Baldacci in 2007 and reappointed by Republican Gov. Paul LePage in 2015. She was registered to vote as a Democrat in the November 2023 election, according to records in the Kennebec County town of Rome, where she resides. Her son is Henry Beck, Maine’s Democratic state treasurer and a former lawmaker.
But those in the capital-area legal community say she’s known for giving everyone a fair shot. While Trump and his allies have berated Bellows, a Democrat, and judges around the country over his ballot eligibility and other pending civil and criminal matters, they have stayed quiet so far on Murphy.
“I’m a pretty staunch Republican. There aren’t many judges that I would trust with this issue. She’s one of them,” Darrick Banda, an Augusta-based criminal defense lawyer, said. “She is probably one of the most thoughtful and wisest judges that we have on the bench right now.”
Augusta-based lawyer Walt McKee has appeared before Murphy hundreds of times and said she “has always been top notch, and she calls it exactly as she sees it.”
The several judges who handle Superior Court cases in Augusta often rotate on receiving assignments to avoid getting overburdened. Murphy was not singled out to receive the Trump appeal but was simply “next in line” for assignment, Barbara Cardone, a spokesperson for the Maine judiciary, said.
After Bellows ruled Dec. 28 that Trump is ineligible for Maine’s primary by finding he incited the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the U.S. Capitol and thus violated the 14th Amendment’s clause on engaging in insurrection, Trump and his attorneys appealed to the Superior Court.
Trump also appealed a similar December decision from the Colorado Supreme Court to the U.S. Supreme Court, which will hold oral arguments Feb. 8 before issuing a ruling that could potentially affect ballots in all states. As the legal challenges play out, Trump’s name will remain on March 5 primary ballots that first go out Jan. 20 to Maine’s military and overseas voters.
Murphy will issue a Superior Court decision by Jan. 17, under deadlines set in state law, and any decision could get appealed within three days to the Supreme Judicial Court, which then must rule within 14 days.
A University of Maine School of Law graduate, Murphy worked as a public defender in Montana and as an assistant attorney general in Augusta before going into private practice in Waterville, where she represented many high-profile defendants before rising to the bench.
She authored high-profile decisions against LePage as well. In 2018, she ruled he lacked the authority to close a Down East prison and ordered his administration to implement a Medicaid expansion that the former governor fought against until he was replaced by Gov. Janet Mills.
Murphy has also bucked the government under the Democratic governor. In September, Murphy rejected a proposed settlement between the state agency that provides legal defense to low-income Mainers and the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine.
Maine judges rarely must weigh in on presidential elections, but it is not unprecedented. The Supreme Judicial Court ultimately turned back a 2013 complaint from three-time presidential candidate Ralph Nader, who accused the Maine Democratic Party of conspiring to keep him off the 2004 ballot.
Former U.S. Rep. Mike Michaud, a Democrat who represented Maine’s 2nd District from 2003 to 2015, recommended Murphy for a federal judgeship in 2010. Michaud said Murphy will do “an excellent job” with the Trump case.
“Good judges like Justice Murphy put all political views aside and look at just the case in front of them and the law,” added Warren Silver, a former Maine Supreme Judicial Court justice who now practices privately in Bangor. “She’s just a very good justice.”
