Starr's Mute Button

There is a sentence in a Ramsey County court order signed on June 29, 2026 that decides, as a matter of judicial finding, that something the Author swore to under penalty of perjury did not happen. Here it is:

“Litigant’s allegation of ‘prohibited ex parte communication’ is a false statement of the facts and without merit.”

The judge who wrote that sentence is Nicole J. Starr. The allegation she declared false is that she cut off a disabled litigant’s audio and video mid-hearing and then talked to opposing counsel without her. The order in which she wrote it is not a ruling on that allegation. It is a form denying the Author a fee waiver.

What Happened on January 22

On January 22, 2026, Starr held a Zoom evidentiary hearing on Kyle T. Manderfeld’s November 10, 2025 Motion for Contempt. The Author appeared pro se from her home in Tempe, Arizona. Manderfeld appeared for Madeline Lee.

Partway through, Starr announced she was going off the record. The Author objected, stated she did not consent to any off-the-record communication, and called out to her husband, Skanda Vishnu Sundar, in the next room, asking him to come in and witness whatever happened next.

What happened next is that the court clerk or Zoom host muted her microphone and severed her video feed. She could not see the proceeding, hear it, speak into it, or record it. Starr and Manderfeld remained in the session together. Mr. Sundar walked in while the lockout was still running and watched it from the other side of the screen — his wife sealed out of a hearing that was continuing without her.

The Author was typing a log as it happened. She later swore to it, under penalty of perjury, as a verbatim and unaltered record. This is the entry, reproduced exactly as typed. The typos are the timestamp:

“starr just said shes gona go off rthe record and i objected and she overrulked so i called skanda as a weitness and they muted me anmd removed my video and access to the eharing”

“oh the clerk was very clear that im still int he room and everyone can hear me but i cant hear them or interact”

When her access came back, Starr told her that nothing of merit had been discussed.

Six Days Later, the Silence Became Agreement

On January 28, 2026, Starr signed the Contempt Order that issued from that hearing. It fines the Author $1,000, awards Manderfeld attorney’s fees, and sets February 5 as the compliance deadline.

It recites that it was entered “[b]ased on the agreements of the parties and counsel.” It recites that “Strickland provided no evidence.”

Both of those sentences describe a person whose microphone was off. She reached no agreements because she could not speak. She provided no evidence because she could not appear. The order converts her exclusion into her consent and her enforced silence into a failure of proof. That contempt finding is the root of the arrest warrant that is still outstanding against her today.

The Order That Answers Everything and Rules on Nothing

Skip forward five months. On June 17, 2026, the Author filed her sixth motion to proceed in forma pauperis, attaching a Social Security Administration Benefit Verification Letter dated that same day. It confirms her sole income is $780 a month in Social Security disability — roughly $9,360 a year — and that she has been federally recognized as disabled since March 31, 2003. The next day, June 18, she filed an Amended Emergency Motion to Quash the Writ of Attachment, raising five grounds: the ex parte communication, a defective notice, false accusations about protected speech, the underlying HRO’s pendency before the Minnesota Supreme Court, and irreparable harm to a disabled litigant.

On June 29, Starr denied the fee waiver. Read the boxes on the form before the words. Box 1 — “The action is frivolous” — is checked. Box 2, the four eligibility findings, is empty. Box 3, the finding that the applicant has not supplied enough information, is empty. Box 4, the date the record would stay open for more evidence, is blank. Eleven days after the SSA certified her income, the court made no finding about her income at all.

Then Box 5, “Other,” which she checked and filled in herself:

“Litigant’s allegation of ‘prohibited ex parte communication’ is a false statement of the facts and without merit. Litigant’s issue that Litigant was not given proper notice is without merit. Litigant failed to appear to argue the merits of the contempt motion and cannot reopen the matter before this court. The issue of the underlying HRO is not properly before this court as Litigant noted the matter is pending before the Minnesota Supreme Court. The issue of the ‘enforcement of the writ causing irreparable harm to a permanently disabled individual’ is without merit, the Court ordered the Writ of Attachment as a result of finding the litigant in contempt of court.”

Lay that against the June 18 motion. Ground one, “a false statement of the facts.” Ground two, “without merit.” Ground four, “not properly before this court.” Ground five, “without merit.” Four of the five grounds, disposed of by name, inside the “Other” box of a fee-waiver form.

And the motion has never been ruled on. There is no order granting it, no order denying it, and no hearing. The grounds are dead and the motion is pending, at the same time, in the same case.

Two Sentences That Eat Their Own Tails

“Litigant failed to appear to argue the merits of the contempt motion and cannot reopen the matter.” She failed to appear because notice of the April 24, 2026 hearing was mailed to a prior address on April 2, forwarded by USPS, and delivered twenty-eight days later on April 30 — the same day the resulting order set as her deadline to respond. That is the notice defect the previous sentence in the same paragraph calls meritless.

“The issue of the ‘enforcement of the writ causing irreparable harm to a permanently disabled individual’ is without merit, the Court ordered the Writ of Attachment as a result of finding the litigant in contempt of court.” That is not an answer to the harm. It is a restatement that she caused it.

Who Actually Knows

Count the people who know whether the January 22 lockout happened. The Author. Mr. Sundar. Manderfeld. The clerk who operated the Zoom controls. Starr.

Two of them executed sworn statements on June 18, 2026 and filed them with the Minnesota Board on Judicial Standards, the body that disciplines Minnesota judges. One of them wrote the opposite into a court order that cites nothing — no transcript, no audio log, no finding about the Zoom session, no mention of the sworn statements it declares false.

That is the mechanism worth staring at. The judge accused of cutting off a party’s access is the judge who rules on whether the cut-off happened, and she rules on it in the document deciding whether that party can afford to say otherwise. There is no step in the sequence where anyone but Starr checks Starr. The same financial record, meanwhile, has been cleared twice by other officers — by Referee Rossow and Judge Kraus in this very case on April 11, 2025, who expressly found the claims not frivolous, and by Judge Donovan W. Frank of the federal District of Minnesota on April 9, 2026.

What Comes Next

On July 28, 2026, the Author petitioned the Minnesota Court of Appeals for a writ of mandamus, asking it to order Starr to do the one thing she has not done since April: rule on the motions challenging the arrest warrant. That writ of attachment runs through December 12, 2026. The Author is a permanently disabled primary caregiver for two children with autism, and she is subject to arrest for every day the motion sits undecided.

She also filed a request for the transcript of the January 22 hearing that same day. That hearing was on the record until the moment Starr said it was not. When the transcript arrives it will answer one of exactly two questions: whether the recording captured the lockout, or whether the recording of a hearing a judge took off the record over a party’s objection is missing the part that matters.

Until then, the record consists of two sworn statements, one contemporaneous log, and one unsworn order asserting that all three are false.