A Texas judge is challenging a state panel's decision reprimanding her for posting Facebook updates about trials she was presiding over.

The State Commission on Judicial Conduct ordered Michelle Slaughter, a Galveston County judge, to enroll in a four-hour class on the "proper and ethical use of social media by judges." The panel concluded that the judge's posts cast "reasonable doubt" on her impartiality.

At the beginning of a high-profile trial last year in which a father was accused of keeping his nine-year-old son in a six-foot by eight-foot wooden box, the judge instructed jurors not to discuss the case against defendant David Wieseckel with "anyone."

"Again, this is by any means of communication. So no texting, e-mailing, talking person to person or on the phone or on Facebook. Any of that is absolutely forbidden," the judge told jurors.

But Slaughter didn't take her own advice, leading to her removal from the case and a mistrial. The defendant eventual was acquitted of unlawful-restraint-of-a-child charges.

The judge told local media Friday that her Facebook posts about the "Boy in the Box" case and others were unbiased.

"I will always conduct my proceedings in a fair and impartial way. The Commission's opinion appears to unduly restrict transparency and openness in government and in our judiciary," she told the Houston Chronicle. "Everything I posted was publicly available information."

The commission didn't agree in its ruling last week:

Judges have a duty to decide every case fairly and impartially. Judicial independence, impartiality, and integrity must be seen in order for the public to have confidence in the legal system. Despite her contention that the information she provided was public information, Judge Slaughter cast reasonable doubt upon her own impartiality and violated her own admonition to jurors by turning to social media to publicly discuss cases pending in her court, giving rise to a legitimate concern that she would not be fair or impartial in the Wieseckel case or in other high-profile cases.

The panel was not pleased with the judge's Facebook post on the first day of testimony in the "Boy in the Box" trial last year.

"After we finished Day 1 of the case called the 'Boy in the Box' case, trustees from the jail came in and assembled the actual 6x8 'box' inside the courtroom!" the judge posted.

The box, however, wasn't even introduced as evidence yet.

"The comments went beyond providing an explanation of the procedures of the court and highlighted evidence that had yet to be introduced at trial," the panel wrote.

The judge also posted a Reuters article, noting that it was an objective story about the case.

Slaughter was also dinged for a post concerning a "difficult" child pornography case she was presiding over last year.

"We have a jury deliberating on punishment for two counts of possession of child pornography," she wrote. "It is probably one of the most difficult types of cases for jurors (and the judge and anyone else) to sit through because of the evidence they have to see. Bless the jury for their service and especially bless the poor child victims."

The judge told the panel that there was nothing harmful about that post. She said she was simply pointing out "an obvious fact that sitting through any child pornography case is difficult."