A member of the state’s highest court has been cleared of wrongdoing after she was accused more than a year ago of failing to step away from cases involving work she had done as a private attorney years earlier.

Catherine Connors, an associate justice on the Maine Supreme Judicial Court, did not recuse herself in 2024 from two major foreclosure cases, which overturned precedent set by rulings in earlier cases that protected homeowners not appropriately notified that they had defaulted on their loans.

As a private attorney before joining the court, Connors regularly represented banks and banking interests. She also worked on cases that led to the decisions she was involved with overturning as a high court justice.

The court’s Committee on Judicial Conduct had argued that any “reasonable observer” might be concerned by Connors’ participation. A panel of district and superior court judges disagreed, deciding Thursday not to discipline Connors.

“A reasonably well-informed observer would understand that law firms represent a variety of clients and that lawyers advocate for clients even when their clients’ beliefs or interests conflict with the lawyers’ own personal beliefs or interests,” three of the panel’s five members wrote in the majority opinion, which found that she had not violated the court’s ethics rules.

The majority panel also wrote that Connors had sought guidance on whether she should recuse herself from the two cases before joining in on the final rulings.

The other two judges issued a concurring opinion, agreeing not to discipline Connors, but saying her impartiality could be questioned after her confirmation hearing in 2020. At the time, they wrote in the opinion, some lawmakers raised concerns about “the appearance of impropriety should she participate in appeals implicating her areas of expertise and her former clients.”

“A reasonable observer might question whether Justice Connors was biased in favor of banking interests because of her previous advocacy for banking interests and specific advocacy for those interests” in the two cases, they wrote.

The case against Connors dates back to January 2024, when an attorney filed a complaint against her that led to the committee’s recommendation that she be publicly reprimanded that December.

This was the first time in the committee’s 47-year history that it had sought discipline against a member of the state supreme court, an attorney for the committee said in October. Members of the court determined in June they could not weigh in on Connors’ case.

The panel that heard Connors’ case included District Court Judge Charles Dow, Superior Court Justice Ann M. Murray and Active Retired Superior Court Justice William Stokes, who ruled in the majority. The concurring opinion was signed by active retired District Court Judges Barbara Raimondi and Patricia Worth.