We received three complaints concerning an Officer’s conduct during a hearing. The Officer asked a member of the public, who was sitting in the public gallery observing, to leave the courtroom as she was breastfeeding. The complaints were from members of the public who had heard about the conduct from media reporting and were unconnected to the hearing and not present in court at the time.

The complaints contained two parts alleging that the Officer:

discriminated against the woman by ruling that she was required to leave the courtroom; and
humiliated the woman by ‘singling her out’ and commenting in open court that she would not be permitted to breastfeed a baby in court and asked her to leave.

We reviewed transcripts and relevant parts of the court file and listened to the audio-visual recording. The Officer was provided with an opportunity to respond to the complaints.

The Officer provided a detailed response:

stating that his request was not related to the broader question of the appropriateness of breastfeeding, whether in public or a courtroom;
providing specifics about the context of the hearing and the necessity of the request at that stage of the trial; and
providing information (that was not known to the complainants or the public) about the related nature of some of the evidence given during the proceeding in closed court.

This information was important to the outcome of the investigation.

As a result, we dismissed the complaints, finding that:

the Officer’s decision to request the woman to leave the courtroom was made to fulfil his responsibility to manage the trial and the jury at a critical stage of the proceeding;
the Officer’s voice was not raised, and his language and tone could not be described as aggressive;
while the woman concerned may have been impacted by the request, the Officer did not intentionally ‘single out’ or ‘humiliate’ the woman such that he infringed the standards of conduct generally expected of judicial officers.

Judicial perspective provides additional vital information