The Rare "Activist Judge" Spotted in the Wild

You hear the term "activist judges" thrown around perhaps too needlessly, but for once it seems to actually fit to describe what happened in this California case. A woman professor sued the University of California for gender discrimination through the course of her employment. The judge in the case allowed a lot of very ridiculous things to happen in the trial:

First, the court delivered a presentation to the jury highlighting major figures in the civil rights movement, and told the jury their duty was to stand in the shoes of Dr. Martin Luther King and bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice. Second, the court allowed the jury to hear about and view a long list of discrimination complaints from across the entire University of California system that were not properly connected to Dr. Pinter-Brown's circumstances or her theory of the case. Third, the court allowed the jury to learn of the contents and conclusions of the Moreno Report, which documented racial discrimination occurring throughout the entire UCLA campus. Finally, the court allowed Dr. Pinter-Brown to resurrect a retaliation claim after the close of evidence despite having summarily adjudicated that very claim prior to trial.

I don't operate under the fiction that judges leave their politics at the door, but I am so puzzled by this judge. It would have been painfully obvious to anyone that this case would get reversed on appeal (which it did), so from the standpoint of effectiveness this backfired. He could have just quietly nudged cases in the direction he wanted for decades and no one would've said anything. California, like many other states, also allows you to strike judges you believe would be prejudiced against you; you'd have to be an idiot to allow an employment discrimination go in front of him if you're the defense.