Dec 4, 2025 By Mike Jones 4 min read

A federal lawsuit filed by a former Washington County Courthouse employee against then-President Judge John DiSalle claiming she was fired from her job over her whistleblower complaints has been dismissed, although it remains active against the county.

Elizabeth Sullivan, who worked in various roles at the courthouse for 24 years before she was terminated in 2023, filed the lawsuit in February alleging retaliatory firing by DiSalle, who was overseeing the problem-solving court where she was working at the time.

Sullivan’s attorney, Noah Geary, originally filed the lawsuit at the Washington County Court of Common Pleas, but it was later moved to the U.S. District Court of Western Pennsylvania for jurisdictional reasons.

U.S. District Judge Christy Criswell Wiegand on Tuesday dismissed the lawsuit against DiSalle and former court administrator Patrick Grimm, who wrote the letter informing Sullivan that she had been terminated. But Wiegand declined to dismiss the case against Washington County’s government, which Sullivan accused of having its salary board illegally fire her under misleading claims by DiSalle that her position had been eliminated.

The federal judge also gave Sullivan until Dec. 23 to file an amended complaint against the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts, Unified Judicial System of Pennsylvania and Washington County Court of Common Pleas, or the federal lawsuit against those entities would also be dismissed.

The intermingled nature between the federal and state claims means that Wiegand remanded portions of them back to the state courts without ruling on them. In a written statement Wednesday, Geary said “we could not be happier about the ruling” as he expects a portion of the case against the county government to proceed in the federal courts and other parts to continue in the state courts.

Attorneys for DiSalle and Grimm declined comment due to the possibility of an appeal to the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals, while a spokeswoman with the AOPC declined comment since the complaint could still be amended against the state courts.

In the original lawsuit, Sullivan claimed she raised concerns about DiSalle’s refusal to allow some defendants to have attorneys at proceedings in the specialized court program he presided over, but was fired after she alerted state judicial officials about various legal issues.

The lawsuit alleged that DiSalle denied dozens of military veterans going through a specialty court to have attorneys present at hearings, and he even sentenced some of them to serve jail time if they were in violation of the program’s rules. When Sullivan notified DiSalle that these defendants were entitled to have an attorney representing them at the hearings, the judge apparently spoke with Grimm in November 2022 and asked that she no longer be permitted to be involved with the problem-solving court, the lawsuit claimed.

“DiSalle’s misconduct for firing Sullivan in retaliation for her bravely blowing the whistle on his denying Veterans in Washington County their Constitutional Right to a Lawyer in criminal hearings as well as DiSalle’s racial harassment of Sullivan (due to her relatives being African-American) will be front and center in the case as it proceeds,” Geary wrote in his statement.

Sullivan contacted the AOPC about DiSalle’s conduct, prompting the judge to allegedly retaliate by having her position eliminated under the guise of “restructuring” that was approved by the county’s salary board. The AOPC later investigated Sullvan’s allegations and found her accusations against DiSalle to be “meritorious” that the judge allegedly violated the state court’s policy on non-discrimination and equal employment opportunity, according to the lawsuit.

“Regarding his retaliatory firing of Sullivan, DiSalle lied to the Washington County Salary Board and deceived them to carrying out his retaliation against Sullivan, which made the Commissioners and the Board members look bad,” Geary wrote in his statement.

The AOPC notified Sullivan in January 2024 that it had taken “appropriate action” on the matter days after DiSalle announced at a Washington County Bar Association meeting that he was stepping down as president judge of the courthouse, but would remain a judge. The lawsuit claims the AOPC “directed” DiSalle to step down from the high-ranking position due to the employment actions he had taken against Sullivan.

DiSalle, who has served as a Washington County judge for 20 years, was up for retention during the Nov. 4 election, and easily won another 10-year term on the bench.