Nathan Coats Censured Retired

Nathan Coats, who served as Chief Justice of the Colorado Supreme Court from 2018 to 2020, received an unprecedented public censure in August 2023 from a special tribunal of Colorado Court of Appeals judges, resolving a case brought by the Colorado Commission on Judicial Discipline. The censure stemmed from a contract the Judicial Department signed on April 11, 2019, agreeing to pay Coats' former chief of staff, Mindy Masias, $2.7 million plus expenses over five years to conduct training — signed while Masias was under investigation for financial misconduct.

Coats admitted he violated the Code of Judicial Conduct's requirement that judges competently and diligently perform their administrative duties. He canceled the contract in July 2019 after learning that Masias had secretly recorded former Chief Justice Nancy Rice — conduct the tribunal found made her plainly unsuitable to hold a contract to train judges in the first place.