San Francisco judge holds Public Defender in contempt and weighs major fines over case refusals
A rare institutional clash inside San Francisco’s criminal courts
A San Francisco Superior Court judge has found the city’s elected Public Defender, Mano Raju, in contempt of court after the office refused to accept dozens of new criminal cases in January and February 2026, escalating a months-long dispute over staffing, attorney workloads and the court’s obligation to provide counsel at the earliest stages of a prosecution.
The ruling centers on whether the Public Defender’s Office violated a court order to stop declaring itself “unavailable” for new appointments and instead take cases unless a true conflict of interest exists. The contempt finding followed hearings that examined how the office triages assignments amid rising caseloads and how the court should respond when defendants appear without representation.
What the judge ruled, and what penalties are still pending
Judge Harry M. Dorfman determined that Raju did not comply with a lawful order to accept new appointments. The court indicated that jail time is unlikely. Instead, the central unresolved issue is financial: the judge said he was still deciding whether the conduct should be treated as a single continuing contempt or as multiple separate acts of contempt, a distinction that can substantially affect the size of any fine.
The Public Defender has said the office intends to appeal. Separate court filings made ahead of the contempt hearing argued that compelling additional appointments during what the office describes as a workload crisis would force attorneys into ethically problematic representation and undermine clients’ constitutional rights to effective assistance of counsel.
How San Francisco got here: shortages, overflow counsel, and delayed representation
The confrontation is the latest consequence of a broader strain across San Francisco’s criminal system. Since May 2025, the Public Defender’s Office has periodically limited intake, citing understaffing and rising workloads. For months, privately contracted defense attorneys—arranged through local mechanisms used for overflow and conflict cases—absorbed some of the spillover. Those attorneys later reported they, too, could no longer accept new appointments, increasing the risk that some defendants would have no lawyer at arraignment or early hearings where bail and release conditions are set.
In public statements and court-related reporting, Raju has described the modern demands of defense work—such as the volume of digital evidence from body-worn cameras and other surveillance—as increasing the time required per case. The office has also publicly described large percentage increases in active misdemeanor and felony caseloads compared with early 2019.
Competing duties: ensuring representation vs. limiting workloads
The case highlights competing legal and operational imperatives:
The court’s responsibility to move cases promptly and ensure indigent defendants have counsel.
The Public Defender’s duty to provide constitutionally effective representation and comply with professional conduct rules, including the obligation not to accept work that cannot be competently handled.
The practical limits of the city’s defense ecosystem when both public defenders and contracted private attorneys reach capacity.
The fines have not yet been finalized. The court has framed the remaining decision as whether the refusal pattern should be punished as one continuing contempt or multiple contempt violations, which would determine the financial scale.
The contempt ruling lands amid continuing debate over how San Francisco should fund and staff indigent defense, and how courts should respond when a defense agency asserts that taking additional cases would compromise representation.