A judge lectured a Black lawyer on “Black football players” at her first hearing. California just removed him.

A Black attorney walked into Judge Robert Draper’s Los Angeles courtroom for her first appearance in a case. Before the hearing was over, he had delivered a rambling discourse on Black football players and the history of race relations in the South, a subject the case had nothing to do with. On Tuesday, California’s Commission on Judicial Performance ordered him removed from the bench.

The commission found that Draper committed nine acts of willful misconduct and eight of prejudicial misconduct, plus one improper action. It said he “persistently violated the standards governing judicial behavior and engaged in extensive and severe misconduct.” The findings include racial and gender bias, improper communications and failure to cooperate with the investigation.

The race findings are the part Black lawyers and litigants will recognize. The commission’s charges described Draper talking with attorneys about Black people’s skin tones and interracial ancestry, and the decision cites his remarks on “Black history, Black football players, the Civil Rights Act, and the Black Lives Matter movement” to a Black attorney. A lawyer who has just arrived in a courtroom should not have to sit through a judge’s lecture about her race before she can argue her client’s case. A Black client could fairly wonder whether the judge on the bench saw a person or a category.

The case also left a mark on the law. A California appeals court later found prejudicial errors in Draper’s rulings in the workplace harassment case at the center of the charges. An Orange County judge disqualified him from the case in October 2023, and he has not heard cases since June 2023.

Draper lost his seat in June to Deputy District Attorney Tal Khan Valbuena. The Los Angeles County Bar Association had rated him “not qualified.” Draper has called the decision wrong, has described the charges as political retaliation, and says he will appeal to the California Supreme Court.

That defense deserves a hearing, and it will get one. But the record he is appealing includes the transcripts. The commission did not need a political motive to read what a judge said to a Black lawyer on her first day.

Removal is rare: only 14 California judges have been removed since 2002, according to one report of the decision. The order becomes final in 30 days unless the California Supreme Court reviews it. Voters and the bar had judged Draper months before the state did. The Supreme Court should let the commission’s order stand.