james ho clerk

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FAST RACK SCOTUS ALITO CLARENCE?

see clarence clerks Ginni

SEE TRUMP JUDGES

SEE CLAREMONSTERS INCUB YOO

no merri

//CNP

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graves tru n: clerkship determines scotus pick sucessor

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RWW VID

Judicial Nominations

Judge James Ho, Right-Wing Favorite for SCOTUS, Promotes Christian Nationalist Vision for Courts

James Ho is a favorite of Christian nationalists as future SCOTUS nominee; in a recent speech he criticized justices for not standing up for "biblical truth"

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rww 10 26

Potential SCOTUS Nominee Judge James Ho Joins Dominionist Extremists at Christian Nationalist Event

Trump Judge James Ho is keynoting a Christian nationalist event run by a guy who's endorsed Ho as a future Supreme Court justice.

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alternet-no lnx

Federalist Society judges are acting badly, again

Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society (Image via Screengrab / CBS News)

Eric SegallMay 10, 2024

Editor’s note: The following first appeared in Dorf on Law.

Many of the judges selected by Leonard Leo and Don McGahn during the Trump years have been acting very badly. A little over a year ago, I documented this terrible behavior by discussing many different judges. For example, Justin Walker was only 37 when he was nominated to be a federal trial judge despite absolutely no trial experience. What Walker possessed were ties to conservative groups, including the Federalist Society. Less than one year later, he was confirmed as a judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

In his brief time as a district court judge, Walker issued a decision in a case involving covid restrictions and prayers on Easter Sunday that reads "less like a judicial decision and more like a screed against Democrats published in an outlet like Breitbart." The first seven pages of the opinion rant about Christians and other religious groups suffering major persecution throughout the ages. The last lines of his opinion speak for themselves: "Christ’s sacrifice isn’t about the logic of this world. Nor is their Easter Sunday celebration. The reason they will be there for each other and their Lord is the reason they believe He was and is there for us. For them, for all believers, it isn’t a matter of reason; finally, it’s a matter of love."

In between these odes to religion, Walker decided to name a bunch of prominent Democrats who long ago belonged to the KKK. There is no connection between that list and any issue in the case. Walker's reward for all this religious and political posturing, as mentioned above, was a promotion to the Court of Appeals.

In that post from a year ago, I also discussed Judge James Ho's decision not to hire graduates of Yale Law School as his clerks. His reasons were quite obscure, centering around, I really don't know, maybe Yale is just too liberal a place for him. I summarized that incident as follows:

Ho was under no obligation to hire Yale clerks in the first place, so why make such a public fuss and call for other federal judges to join the "boycott?" One theory is that he is auditioning for the Supreme Court. Another theory is that he just likes publicity. But the theory does not matter. Except to the extent that actual cases before him sometimes call for judgments that are as much political as legal--which is substantially less frequently for a lower court judge than for the Supreme Court--Judge Ho has no business getting involved in culture wars and taking obvious political sides. To do so is inappropriate for a sitting federal judge.

Well, Judge Ho is back at it again. On Monday, he and 12 other Trump/Leo/McGahn Federalist Society judges sent a letter to the president of Columbia University saying they will no longer hire law clerks who attend Columbia either as an undergraduate or a law student. Again, the reasoning of the boycott is quite obscure but has something to do with vague and unsubstantiated charges of viewpoint discrimination (totally undocumented) and other aspects of how Columbia has handled the student protests over Gaza.

As an aside, it's worth noting that the letter makes various factual assertions, some of which are highly contestable and others which are flatly wrong. For example, the letter concludes by citing a supposed precedent, stating that "Justice William Brennan refused to hire law clerks from Harvard Law School because he disliked criticisms of the Supreme Court by some of its faculty."

But that's nonsense, as Judge Ho and his buddies could have discovered by looking at a list of Justice Brennan's clerks. They would have then realized that from 1956 to 1965, Justice Brennan hired clerks only from Harvard; thereafter, he hired from a variety of schools, including from Harvard in most years. The tiny kernel of truth in this mostly false retelling is that for a short period of time Justice Brennan apparently was angry at Harvard over personal matters, but he nevertheless consistently hired Harvard graduates throughout his career. But why let facts get in the way of a good rant?

As for the letter's announcement of the boycott itself, again, these judges do not have to hire any Columbia graduates or any other graduates and probably can choose clerks based on viewpoint discrimination. Therefore, the judges' desire to go public must be for some reason separate from their hiring practices. That being the case, it is obvious that federal judges should not involve themselves in social, cultural and political disputes separate from their case-deciding function. If you want to publicly speak and rant about the pressing and controversial issues of the day, which is all this letter was, do not accept a federal judgeship. It really is that simple.

Additionally, the public airing of this grievance by judges is terrible on its own terms, but you do not have to believe me. That bleeding heart liberal Eugene Volokh said that:

We shouldn't threaten innocent neutrals as a means of influencing the culpable. Columbia students aren't the ones who set Columbia policy. They may disagree with that policy, or they may not know enough about the subject to have a view ... They shouldn't be held responsible for what Columbia does, and they shouldn't be retaliated against as a means of trying to pressure Columbia to change.

Eugene also makes the point that we normally reject guilt by association: "We may refuse to hire people who do various bad things, but we shouldn't refuse to hire people who are friends with those people, or who belong to the same groups as those people."

Imagine blaming a lone undergrad or law student for the policies implemented by university officials the students have absolutely no control over. Such a "guilt by association" tactic would be terrible if implemented by a private firm, much less by federal judges.

But maybe guilt by association is exactly the point that these Federalist Society Judges are trying to make by this and the other political stunts I documented in my blog post a year ago. It appears that many (certainly not all) of the judges appointed during the Trump Administration believe that all things secular and liberal are bad, and these judges want the whole world to know that either because they, like Judge Walker, want promotions or they simply want to "own the libs." Both of those reasons are, of course, unseemly and just plain wrong.

It is terrible that federal judges have life tenure and can only be impeached for committing high crimes and misdemeanors. But at least for most of our history, they stayed out of the political wars occurring outside their judicial jurisdictions. But, and this really is not a surprise, these Federalist Society judges feel license to stir up trouble, make controversial public statements, and most recently get in the middle of the terrifyingly hard issues raised by the campus protests relating to the Middle East crisis.

These thirteen judges are acting like immature and hormonal teenagers believing that the world does and should revolve around them and their daily need to unleash terror on those they dislike. Most teens grow out of that particular mindset, but not so for these and many other Federalist Society federal judges. For them, public outbursts of anger and bitterness towards the left are more than fair game; they lead to rewards and promotions. And that is what happens when the leaders of the Federalist Society get to choose our nation's judges.

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guk 3 24

when the former president Donald Trump appointed the Texas attorney James Ho to the fifth circuit court of appeals in 2017, lawyers at the prominent law firm Gibson Dunn – where Ho worked before his appointment – had a problem: how to replace the politically connected Ho. Turns out, they didn’t even need to change the home address for his replacement. Ho’s wife, Allyson, moved into her husband’s position and his old office.

Meet the Hos.

Few people outside of legal circles have heard of the Hos, yet the couple is tied to the case before the US supreme court that will determine women’s access to mifepristone, a drug commonly used in medication abortions. The court hears arguments in the case on Tuesday.

Ho served on the three-judge panel last summer that ruled to restrict access to mifepristone. The legal group behind the mifepristone case, Alliance Defending Freedom, made at least six payments from 2018 through 2022 to his wife, Allyson, a powerhouse federal appellate lawyer who has argued in front of the supreme court and has deep connections to the conservative legal movement that has led the attack on the right to abortion in the US.

The payments don’t violate the court’s code of conduct, according to Stephen Gillers, a New York University emeritus professor of law and author of Regulation of Lawyers: Problems of Law and Ethics. But some court watchers argue that Ho’s failure to recuse himself from the case illustrates why public trust in the judiciary is eroding. One recent survey found that 63% of judges noted a dip in the public’s positive perception of them.

“When Americans see a case like this – so clearly concocted and motivated by special interests, and with evident connections between those interests and the judges on the case, it does tremendous damage to the reputation of the courts, and to the public trust in their ability to give all litigants an even shake,” said Alex Aronson, the executive director of the non-partisan group Court Accountability and a former chief counsel to the Democratic senator Sheldon Whitehouse.

In an email to the Guardian, James Ho wrote that he “consulted our court’s ethics advisor prior to sitting in that case, and was advised that there was no basis for recusal. In any event, my wife’s practice is to donate honoraria to charity.”

The Hos are just one of the increasing number of power couples in the conservative movement in which the wife of a prominent official works in the background, laying the groundwork for Republican policies that their spouses will rule upon or legislate. In the mifepristone case, the wife of the Missouri senator Josh Hawley, Erin, is the attorney of record for Alliance Defending Freedom and argued the case before Ho. The supreme court justice Clarence Thomas rankled the legal world when he refused to recuse himself from a case involving questions about the January 6 insurrection and the “Stop the Steal” campaign to which his wife, Ginni Thomas, was closely tied.

For Aronson, these are examples of “serious concerns about what is becoming an apparent pattern of coordinated activity by some of these couples in this extremist movement, including the Thomases, Hawleys and Hos”.

Ho’s rulings have included zealous language, referencing what he called in one decision “the moral tragedy of abortion”. He has suggested that protection orders in domestic violence cases “are too often misused as a tactical device in divorce proceedings – and issued without any actual threat of danger”. Orin Kerr, a University of California, Berkeley, law professor, tweeted that one of Ho’s opinions “reads like a politician’s op-ed, not a legal opinion; judges should stick to law”.

What Alabama’s IVF ruling reveals about the ascendant Christian nationalist movement

Read more](https://yyy.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/02/christian-nationalism-alabama-ivf-ruling-politics)

In the mifepristone case, in which Ho supported rolling back decisions made by the Food and Drug Administration to loosen restrictions on the drug, he wrote: “Unborn babies are a source of profound joy for those who view them. Expectant parents eagerly share ultrasound photos with loved ones. Friends and family cheer at the sight of an unborn child. Doctors delight in working with their unborn patients – and experience an aesthetic injury when they are aborted.”

He has chafed legal traditionalists from the moment of his swearing-in, when he opted for the ceremony to be held in the private library of Harlan Crow – the conservative mega-donor who, ProPublica revealed, has lavished Clarence Thomas with trips on his yacht and paid the$6,000-a-month private school tuition for the justice’s great-nephew. Ho worked as a clerk for Thomas in 2005.

Ho vowed to boycott hiring Yale Law School graduates as clerks after students interrupted conservative speakers on campus, noting “cancellations and disruptions seem to occur with special frequency” at the Ivy League school.

His caustic writings have drawn the spotlight while his wife, Allyson, has been working more inconspicuously, helping lay the legal foundation for conservative policies in her own work.

She appears frequently as a speaker for the Federalist Society, the group that has led the conservative effort to reshape the judiciary. She has also worked pro bono for the Christian right organization First Liberty Institute, a group that describes its mission “to defend and restore religious liberty in our schools, for our churches and houses of worship, inside the military, and throughout the public arena”.

It’s unclear what Alliance Defending Freedom paid Allyson Ho to do, yet ending abortion is central among the organization’s goals. The group helped writethe Mississippi law that led to the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v Wade and ended the 50-year-old constitutional right to an abortion.

Her husband’s financial disclosures list descriptions of “Academy” or “Freedom Summit”, next to some of the payments. The ADF hosts various legal trainings as part of its ADF Legal Academy that “seamlessly combines outstanding legal training with an unwavering commitment to Christian principles” and a Young Lawyers Academy.

The Alliance Defending Freedom said: “ADF often invites lawyers of various backgrounds and experiences to speak at events. ADF offers honorariums for speaker participation. Allyson Ho is an exceptional lawyer with vast and diverse legal experience.”

A request to speak with Allyson Ho sent to Gibson Dunn has not been answered.

The Texas senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, both Republicans, appointed Allyson to the state’s committee responsible for recommending and vetting its recommendations to fill judicial vacancies. Neither Cruz nor Cornyn’s offices responded to the Guardian’s request for the names or dates of service for the judicial vetting committee nor did they respond to questions about what role, if any, Allyson had in her husband’s nomination to the bench.

[

‘They hate God’: US anti-abortion activists aim to fight back on 51st Roe anniversary

Read more](https://yyy.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/22/roe-v-wade-abortion-anniversary-2023)

In 2023, the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, hired Allyson and Gibson Dunn, at a rate of $1,313 per hour – with a $7m cap – to represent the state in a decade-long legal battle in which a federal judge determined Texas had failed to protect foster children. The state had previously been represented by attorneys on its own payroll. The move to hire Allyson and her firm signaled that Texas could be looking to fight backagainst court orders mandating Texas comply with federal monitors appointed to ensure the safety of vulnerable children in its care by appealing district court rulings to the fifth circuit court of appeals – the court on which James Ho serves.

The mifepristone case might just be the beginning of the Hos’ influence, Gillers, the NYU professor, said.

“If Trump wins the election, you’ll see Ho on the short list of nominees to the supreme court,” he said. “He is obviously behaving in a way that makes him a very prominent candidate in a Republican administration.”

That appointment could once again leave an empty office – one that some might want Allyson to fill.

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3 24 msnbc judge ho wife/ho took money from ADF while he was ruling on them

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no lnx many

https://www.vox.com/scotus/23841718/edgelord-federal-judiciary-james-ho-fifth-circuit-abortion-guns

The edgelord of the federal judiciary

Imagine a Breitbart comments forum come to life and given immense power over innocent people. That’s Judge James Ho.

By Ian Millhiser Aug 26, 2023,

James Ho sits on a panel speaking as video of him is projected on a screen behind him at the Federalist Society’s 2022 National Lawyers Convention in Washington, DC.

Trump Judge James Ho speaks at a 2022 event hosted by the Federalist Society. Shuran Huang/Washington Post via Getty Images]

Ian Millhiser is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he focuses on the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and the decline of liberal democracy in the United States. He received a JD from Duke University and is the author of two books on the Supreme Court.

If you could breathe life into 4chan, the dark corner of the Internet where shitposters, edgelords, Groypers, and trolls of all kinds thrive, and then appoint this new lifeform to the federal bench, you would have created Judge James Ho.

Ho, appointed by former president Donald Trump in 2018 to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, recently argued that anti-abortion doctors may seek a court order banning a commonly prescribed abortion medication, because “doctors delight in working with their unborn patients — and experience an aesthetic injury when they are aborted.”

He’s written that a federal law prohibiting gun possession by people that a court has determined to be a “credible threat to the physical safety of [their] intimate partner” is unconstitutional. Among other things, Ho claimed that this law “should give us pause” because women getting a divorce sometimes seek such court orders as “a tactical leverage device” in their divorce proceedings.

Ho’s very first opinion as a judge, a dissenting opinion in a case he did not even hear, claimed that all laws limiting the amount that wealthy donors may give to political campaigns are unconstitutional.Under Ho’s understanding of the Constitution, nothing prevents Harlan Crow, the billionaire Republican donor famous for lavishing gifts on Justice Clarence Thomas, from funding an entire presidential campaign.

Also, speaking of Harlan Crow, Ho held his official ceremony swearing him in as a federal judge in Crow’s personal library.

Ho’s work, in other words, is often indistinguishable from that of a professional troll. He revels in taking deliberately provocative positions. He often joins a fairly extreme opinion written by a colleague, and then writes separately to take an even more extreme position. His judicial opinions mingle Fox News talking points, men’s rights activism, Federalist Society fantasies, and discredited legal doctrines that are now taught to law students to warn them of the Supreme Court’s worst mistakes.

Ho seems to never miss an opportunity to weigh in on a political controversy. When he’s not writing concurring opinions arguing that the Supreme Court should bring back the Lochner era, an age when conservative justices imposed their own laissez-faire ideology on the rest of the nation, he can often be found lecturing law schools on the evils of “cancel culture.”

(That said, Ho did not respond to a request to be interviewed for this piece.)

When I speak to other judges, I often hear them use a derisive word to describe this kind of behavior: “auditioning.” It’s an increasingly common practice among Republican judges itching for a promotion.

In his final years as a lower court judge, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote several opinions laying out his plans to shift power from federal agencies to the judiciary — a high-priority issue for the Federalist Society, which played a key role in picking Trump’s judges and justices. These opinions reportedly “proved decisive” in the Trump White House’s decision to give Gorsuch a big promotion.

Similarly, in his final year as a lower court judge, Justice Brett Kavanaugh — who previously had a thin record on abortion — went out of his way to convey both in a published opinion and in a speech to a conservative think tank that he opposed Roe v. Wade. Trump picked Kavanaugh for the next seat to open up on the Supreme Court.

The most alarming thing about Judge Ho, in other words, isn’t his penchant for trolling. It is the very real possibility that he will be rewarded for it. No judge in America has auditioned harder for a Supreme Court appointment in a Republican administration. And, if the next president is Donald Trump, Trump has already shown that he prefers judges who go out of their way to show their loyalty to Republican causes.

What does Jim Ho’s version of the Constitution look like?

Lochner v. New York (1905) is one of a handful of decisions that legal scholars refer to as the “anti-canon” — a list of cases taught to law students as examples of how judges must never, ever behave. The list also includes the pro-slavery decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) and the segregationist decision in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).

Ho wants to bring back Lochner.

Lochner stuck down a New York state law that limited, to 60 hours a week, the amount of time worked by bakery workers. At the time, these workers were typically paid by the day or by the week, so the law had prevented these workers from being forced to work extraordinarily long shifts for no extra pay.

Other cases applying Lochner’s reasoning struck down minimum wage laws and stripped workers of their right to unionize.

Lochner was grounded in what it described as the “right of the individual to ... enter into those contracts in relation to labor which may seem to him appropriate or necessary for the support of himself and his family.” The idea was that, if a worker entered into a contract to work long hours for little pay, then the law could not alter this contract — even if the contract was itself the product of exploitation or desperation.

Lochner, in other words, not only stripped the government of much of its power to protect workers, it did so on the dubious ground that, by insisting that workers adhere to whatever exploitative employment contracts their bosses imposed upon them, the Court was actually defending the rights of those workers. The Court ultimately abandoned Lochner in West Coast Hotel v. Parrish (1937).

Ho picked an inauspicious case, Golden Glow Tanning Salon v. City of Columbus, to offer his love letter to Lochner. In it, a Mississippi tanning salon claimed that Covid era lockdowns violated the salon owner’s “right to work,” a common argument made by modern day libertarians who seek to revive Lochner. (A “right to work” is synonymous with Lochner’s so-called right to “enter into those contracts in relation to labor which may seem to him appropriate.”)

Though all three judges who heard Golden Glow agreed that the Supreme Court’s decisions repudiating Lochnerism prevented them from ruling in the tanning salon’s favor, Ho wrote a brief concurring opinion that relied heavily on scholarship by right-wing lawyers arguing that Lochner should be revived. He suggested that the anti-worker right recognized in Lochner has a “better historical grounding than more recent claims of right that have found judicial favor.” And he urged the Supreme Court to take up a pending case seeking to revive Lochner (the justices declined to do so).

Ho’s passion for the sorts of economic “rights” favored by Gilded Age robber barons is matched by his disdain for abortion. He wrote about the “moral tragedy of abortion” in one of his judicial opinions. And he’s urged his Fifth Circuit — which is already the most right-wing federal appeals court in the country, and is typically hostile towards reproductive freedom — to be even more aggressive in quashing abortion rights.

Just last week, for example, a three-judge panel that includes Ho attempted to ban the drug mifepristone, which is used in more than half of all US abortions. That decision will have no effect, because the Supreme Court preemptively blocked it last April — a pretty clear sign that even this very conservative Supreme Court thinks that the legal arguments against mifepristone are weak.

But Ho didn’t just join this attempt to ban the drug, in a case called Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA,he wrote a separate opinion arguing that his colleagues were insufficiently hostile to abortion rights.

Technically, the Fifth Circuit’s majority opinion in Alliance did not purport to ban mifepristone outright, it merely ordered the FDA to reinstate restrictions on the drug that the agency abandoned in 2016. As a practical matter, this order would prevent the drug from being marketed in the United States for at least a few months, because it would take a long time for government regulators and the drug maker to comply with the pre-2016 rules. But Ho would have gone even further, ordering the FDA to rescind its decision to approve the medication way back in 2000.

There are so many errors in Ho’s legal reasoning that it would be tedious to list them all here. One of them is that the statute of limitations to challenge an FDA approval of a drug is six years. While there are legitimate reasons that time period can sometimes be extended, Ho can’t rescue a lawsuit that was filed more than two decades after mifepristone’s approval.

On guns, Ho joined the Fifth Circuit’s decision in United States v. Rahimi (2023), a decision the Supreme Court is likely to reverse in its upcoming term, holding that people who violently abuse their romantic partners or their partner’s child have a Second Amendment right to own a gun — even after a court proceeding determines that the abuser is “a credible threat to the physical safety of such intimate partner or child.”

Rahimi is another case where Ho joined an alarming decision written by one of his colleagues, and then wrote separately to argue for an even more extreme position.

Ho argues that one reason his court should be skeptical of a law seeking to disarm people subject to domestic violence restraining orders is that women who are not victims of abuse allegedly obtain these orders to “secure [favorable] rulings on critical issues such as [marital and child] support, exclusion from marital residence and property disposition.”

As evidence that this is a real problem that actually exists, Ho cites a handful of court decisions — including a 1993 decision by a court in New Jersey that invalidated a restraining order because of a lack of evidence that the man subjected to it was violent, and a 2005 incident where comedian David Letterman was briefly subject to a restraining order before a court tossed that order out.

The fact that Ho had to rely on decades-old cases in faraway jurisdictions to show that judges sometimes issue domestic violence restraining orders for invalid reasons is a sign that, maybe, this isn’t as big of a problem as Ho makes it out to be. Nevertheless, Ho would potentially arm hundreds of men who have murderous intentions in order to save someone like Letterman from having to go without a firearm for a couple of weeks.

Ho could be the future of the federal judiciary

Ho’s penchant for tacking to the right of his already quite reactionary colleagues marks him as an outlier, even within a conservative federal judiciary. But he’s hardly an extreme outlier, especially on the far-right Fifth Circuit.

In Collins v. Mnuchin (2019), for example, Ho signed onto an opinion by Judge Don Willett that threatened to invalidate every single action taken by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), which was created in 2008 to stabilize the US housing market during a historic recession. Had Willett’s approach prevailed in the Supreme Court, it could have potentially collapsed the US housing market and triggered a global economic depression (the Supreme Court voted 8-1 against Willett’s approach).

Notably, however, Ho was one of a total of seven judges who signed onto Willett’s attempt to burn down more than a dozen years of work by a federal agency. There is no shortage of judicial arsonists on the Fifth Circuit.

Similarly, the Supreme Court will hear several cases in its upcoming term in which it is likely to reverse similarly aggressive decisions by the Fifth Circuit. Those most likely include the Alliance case about mifepristone, as well as the Rahimi guns case, and two decisions declaring the entire the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau unconstitutional and gutting the federal government’s power to enforce securities law.

The leading contenders for the Republican presidential nomination are already signaling that they want to pick justices who are well to the right of the three already very conservative justices Trump placed on the Supreme Court. In his infamous speech before the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, Trump said that he is “not happy with the Supreme Court” because they supposedly “love to rule against me.” (When Trump was president, the Court often manipulated its own procedures to rule in Trump’s favor, but the Court rejected his bid to overturn the 2020 election.)

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis attacked Trump’s justices in June, claiming that “none of those three are at the same level of Justices Thomas and Justice Alito,” two justices who fairly consistently vote like Fifth Circuit judges.

Ho, meanwhile, is auditioning harder than anyone in the judiciary to catch Trump or DeSantis’s eye. And, even if the next Republican president decides to pick someone less flamboyant for the high court, they will have no shortage of candidates who are eager to light decades' worth of settled law — along with entire federal agencies — on fire.

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During his four years in the White House, Donald Trump — with the help of then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — appointed not only three U.S. Supreme Court Justices (Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch), but also, a long list lower federal court judges. One of them wasU.S. Circuit Judge James C. Ho, who, according to Reuters, is now boycotting Yale Law School clerks because of “cancel culture.”

During a Federalist Society speech in Kentucky on Thursday, September 29, Ho claimed that Yale “not only tolerates the cancellation of views — it actively practices it.” And Ho, stressing that he is no longer hiring law clerks from Yale, encouraged other right-wing judges to boycott Yale as well.

Ho said of Yale, “Cancellations and disruptions seem to occur with special frequency.”

One of the incidents Ho cited involved Kristen Waggoner, who now heads the far-right Christian fundamentalist legal group Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). The Southern Poverty Law Center considers ADF, based in Scottsdale, Arizona, an anti-gay hate group.

During a March 2022 appearance at Yale, Waggoner was disrupted by pro-gay law students.

Ho told Reuters, “I don't want to cancel Yale. I want Yale to stop cancelling people like me."

Ho, born in Taiwan in 1973, has lived in the United States since childhood and is well-known in right-wing legal circles. The judge has had his critics on the libertarian right, but he is popular among social conservatives and Christian fundamentalists and was once a law clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas. Known for being a major culture-warrior, Ho has been active in the Federalist Society since the 1990s and has also worked with theFirst Liberty Institute (a right-wing Christian fundamentalist legal group). After Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death in 2020, Trump considered nominating Ho for the Supreme Court but ending up picking Barrett instead.

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nyt

...The spectacle of a Supreme Court justice’s spouse taking to Facebook to champion the attempt of a defeated president to stay in power, as Ginni Thomas did on the morning of Jan. 6, crossed a line for several people in the Thomases’ circle who talked to The Times. “That’s what she does — it has nothing to do with him,” said Armstrong Williams, Justice Thomas’s longtime friend. “Should she use better judgment? Yes. You can quote me on that.”

Ginni Thomas posted a disclaimer after the protests devolved into an insurrection — “[Note: written before violence in US Capitol]” — but she had also lamented Trump’s loss in a message to“Thomas Clerk World,” a private email group used by Ginni Thomas and former clerks and their spouses that is typically reserved for more anodyne pleasantries. Her use of the forum prompted a bitter debate among the former clerks that soon leaked. It started on Jan. 17, when Smith, the Notre Dame professor, shared an article from Christianity Today denouncing the Jan. 6 violence. Among those who weighed in was Eastman, who was a speaker at the rally. “Rest assured that those of us involved in this are working diligently to ascertain the truth,” he wrote.

Eastman then used the Thomas email group to invite “those of you interested in more information” to get in touch, prompting Smith to reply that he hoped everyone agreed “that the search for truth doesn’t in any way justify insurrection, trying to kidnap and assassinate elected officials, attacking police officers, or making common cause with racists and anti-Semites” because “such things are flatly contrary to authentic Christian faith.” (Details of Eastman’s role continue to emerge, including a message he sent to Pence’s top lawyer during the Capitol attack blaming the vice president for refusing to overturn the election; he repeatedly cited the Fifth Amendment in refusing to answer questions from the Jan. 6 committee.)

By Jan. 18, Ginni Thomas felt compelled to issue a semi-apology on the forum, which also leaked. “I have likely imposed on you my lifetime passions,” she wrote. “My passions and beliefs are likely shared with the bulk of you, but certainly not all. And sometimes the smallest matters can divide loved ones for too long. Let’s pledge to not let politics divide THIS family, and learn to speak more gently and knowingly across the divide,” adding, “I am certainly on the humble side of awareness here. ”

In the year that has passed, Ginni Thomas has deleted one of her two Facebook accounts and has taken a lower profile. But she remains active. Last year, she invited Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida to join a Groundswell call, describing her group as a “cone-of-silence coalition” in an email to his staff that was obtained by American Oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog group. She invoked her husband, telling DeSantis’s aides that the justice had been in contact with the governor “on various things of late.” (DeSantis, who did not respond to requests for comment, was in the midst of a number of high-profile federal court battles at the time.)...

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James Chiun-Yue Ho (born 1973) is an American attorney and jurist serving as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

Early life and education[

Ho was born in Taipei, Taiwan, in 1973.^[1] He moved to the United States with his parents as a toddler and was raised in San Marino, California.^[2] After graduating from the Polytechnic School in Pasadena, he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in public policy, with honors, from Stanford University and a Juris Doctor with high honors, from the University of Chicago Law School in 1999.^[2][3]^

Career[

After graduating from law school, Ho was a law clerk to Judge Jerry Edwin Smith of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit from 1999 to 2000.^[1] He was in private practice in Washington, D.C., from 2000 to 2001.^[1] He then joined the U.S. Department of Justice, first in the Civil Rights Division (2001) and then in the Office of Legal Counsel (2001–2003).^[1] During his time at the Office of Legal Counsel, Ho authored a memo that defended the legality of enhanced interrogation techniques.^[4] He was chief counsel to subcommittees of the Senate Judiciary Committee from 2003 to 2005^[1] under Republican Senator John Cornyn.^[5] He was then a law clerk to United States Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas from 2005 to 2006.^[1] Ho was in private practice in Dallas, Texas from 2006 to 2008 and 2010 to 2017.^[1] From 2008 to 2010, he was solicitor general of Texas in the Office of the Attorney General of Texas,^[1] replacing Ted Cruz in that position.^[5] As Texas solicitor general, Ho led the state's lawsuits against the Obama administration.^[5]^

Ho has worked as a volunteer attorney with the First Liberty Institute, a religious legal advocacy organization.^[6][7] He has held multiple positions as a member of the Federalist Society since 1996.^[8]^

In a 2006 law review article published in The Green Bag, Ho wrote that "Birthright citizenship is guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment. That birthright is protected no less for children of undocumented persons than for descendants of Mayflower passengers."^[9][10] In a 2011 op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal, Ho wrote that "Opponents of illegal immigration cannot claim to champion the rule of law and then, in the same breath, propose policies that violate our Constitution."^[10][11]^

Federal judicial service[

On September 28, 2017, President Donald Trump announced his intent to nominate Ho as a Circuit Judge to an undetermined seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.^[12] Cruz had promoted Ho as a candidate for a vacancy on the court.^[12] On October 16, 2017, Trump sent Ho's nomination to the Senate. He was nominated to the seat vacated by Judge Carolyn Dineen King, who took senior status.^[13] On November 15, 2017, a hearing on his nomination was held before the Senate Judiciary Committee.^[14] On December 7, 2017, his nomination was reported out of committee by a 11–9 vote.^[15] On December 14, 2017, the full United StatesSenate voted 53–43 to confirm Ho's nomination.^[16] He received his judicial commission on January 4, 2018.

In July 2018, Carrie Johnson of NPR wrote that "Ho has shaken up the staid world of appellate law by deploying aggressive rhetoric in cases involving guns, abortion rights and campaign finance regulations." Johnson wrote that "critics say Ho is writing op-ed columns, not legal opinions ... Friends and former colleagues said he's an intellectual engaging with ideas." In a judicial opinion, Ho said the current "government ... would be unrecognizable to our Founders"; in another he wrote of the First Amendment "right[s] of ... bishops to express their profound objection to the moral tragedy of abortion".^[5]^

On September 9, 2020, Trump included Ho on a list of potential nominees to the Supreme Court.^[17]^

Notable opinions[

On April 18, 2018, in his first written opinion as a Fifth Circuit judge, Ho dissented from a denial of a rehearing en banc in a case regarding a limit on campaign contributions. The Fifth Circuit three-judge panel upheld the constitutionality of a City of Austin ordinance setting an individual campaign contribution limit of $350 per election for candidates for mayor and city council, rejecting the plaintiff's claim that the limit violated the First Amendment. In his dissent, Ho argued the court "should have granted rehearing en banc and held that the Austin contribution limit violates the First Amendment" and asserted that "if there is too much money in politics, it's because there's too much government."^[18][19][20]^

Ho described abortion as a "moral tragedy" in one of his rulings which upheld a Texan law that required abortion facilities to bury or cremate fetal remains.^[21]^

On 2020, Ho was a member of a panel that stayed a preliminary injunction entered by U.S. District Judge Fred Biery that expanded the right to use a mail-in ballot to all Texas voters during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic (allowing broader use of mail-in voting than under the Texas Election Code, which entitled only Texas voters over age 65 to vote absentee without an excuse). Ho wrote a separate concurring opinion favoring the state officials.^{[22][23][24][25][26]}^

In 2020, Ho wrote a concurring opinion in another voting rights case, involving a challenge to Texas Governor Greg Abbott's order restricting the number of drop-off locations for mail-in ballot to one per county. Abbott's order closed dozens of drop-off locations in populous, heavily Democratic urban areas in Texas. The order was challenged by civil rights groups, and the district court held that the order violated the constitutional right to vote. Ho joined a Fifth Circuit order that stayed the district court's ruling and held that the governor's order did not infringe the right to vote. In a concurring opinion, Ho wrote that Texas election law should not be "rewritten" by "executive fiat" or "judicial fiat."^[27][28][29]

On April 9, 2021, Ho dissented when the 5th Circuit refused to hear en banc on a case regarding the Certification Rule used to help implement the Affordable Care Act.Ho and four other judges would have struck down the Certification Rule.^[30]^

References[

^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_C.Ho#cite_ref-FJCBio_1-1) ^c(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_C.Ho#cite_ref-FJCBio_1-2) ^d(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_C.Ho#cite_ref-FJCBio_1-3) ^e(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_C.Ho#cite_ref-FJCBio_1-4) ^f(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_C.Ho#cite_ref-FJCBio_1-5) ^g(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_C.Ho#cite_ref-FJCBio_1-6) ^h(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_C._Ho#cite_ref-FJCBio_1-7) Ho, James C., History of the Federal Judiciary, Federal Judicial Center.
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_C._Ho#cite_ref-JCouncilTXLawyer12142017_2-1) Council, John (December 14, 2017). "Senate Confirms Former Texas Solicitor General James Ho to Fifth Circuit". Texas Lawyer. New York City. Retrieved December 14, 2017.
^ Mathews |, Joe (October 27, 2020). "Two Would-Be Supreme Court Justices and Me". Zócalo Public Square. Retrieved February 18, 2022.
^ Stern, Mark Joseph (October 25, 2019). "The Trump Bench: James Ho". Slate Magazine. Retrieved February 18, 2022.
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_C.Ho#cite_ref-Johnson_5-1) ^c(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_C.Ho#cite_ref-Johnson_5-2) ^d(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_C._Ho#cite_ref-Johnson_5-3) Johnson, Carrie (July 26, 2018). "Legal Opinions Or Political Commentary? A New Judge Exemplifies The Trump Era". NPR. Retrieved October 18, 2018.
^ "First Liberty Institute Congratulates Its Former Volunteer Attorney James C. Ho on His Judicial Confirmation" (Press release). December 14, 2017. Retrieved December 16, 2017.
^ Marcus, Ilana; Eaton, Joshua; Timms, Ed (March 20, 2020). "Federal judges: From political players to lifetime appointments". Roll Call. Retrieved May 24, 2020.
^ "Questionnaire for Judicial Nominees" (PDF). judiciary.senate.gov. Retrieved June 30, 2018.
^ Ho, James Chiun-Yue (2006). "Defining "American": Birthright Citizenship and the Original Understanding of the 14th Amendment" (PDF). The Green Bag. 9 (4): 376. ISSN 1095-5216. Archived from the original (PDF) on October 30, 2010. Retrieved March 27, 2012.
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_C._Ho#cite_ref-posttrumpjudge_10-1) Paul, Deanna (October 30, 2018). "Trump wants to end birthright citizenship. A judge he appointed says he can't". Washington Post. Archived from the original on November 16, 2018. Retrieved December 20, 2018.
^ Ho, James (January 5, 2011). "Birthright Citizenship and the 14th Amendment". Wall Street Journal. Archived from the original on May 9, 2017. Retrieved December 20, 2018.
^ :{Jump up to::(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^a ^b(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_C._Ho#cite_ref-SvitekPlatoff_12-1) Patrick Svitek & Emma Platoff, Trump taps two Texans — Willett and Ho — for judicial posts, Texas Tribune (September 28, 2017).
^ PN1108 — James C. Ho — The Judiciary, 115th Congress (2017-2018), Congress.gov.
^ United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary: Nominations for November 15, 2017
^ Results of Executive Business Meeting – December 7, 2017, Senate Judiciary Committee
^ U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes 115th Congress – 1st Session United States Senate Vote Summary: Vote Number 317, United States Senate, December 14, 2017
^ "Remarks by President Trump on Judicial Appointments"
^ Zimmerman v. City of Austin, 881 F.3d 378 (5th Cir. 2018).
^ Stern, Mark Joseph (April 24, 2018). "Trump Judge Judges Trumpily". slate.com. Retrieved May 6, 2018.
^ Smith, Bradley (May 2, 2018). "Trump-appointed judge delivers fantastic campaign finance opinion in first ruling". The Washington Examiner. Retrieved May 6, 2018.
^ Diaz, Kevin (July 18, 2018). "Gov. Abbott staffer Andrew Oldham confirmed to 5th Circuit Court of Appeals". Houston Chronicle. Retrieved February 17, 2022.
^ "IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT No. 20-50407: Texas Democratic Party, et al. v. Greg Abbott, et al" (PDF). June 4, 2020. Retrieved June 4, 2020.
^ "Federal appeals court extends block on voting-by-mail expansion in Texas". June 4, 2020. Retrieved June 4, 2020.
^ "Texas Democratic Party v. Abbott, 961 F.3d 389 (5th Cir. June 4, 2020) - Google Scholar". scholar.google.co.uk. Retrieved October 13, 2020.
^ "Texas Democratic Party v. Abbott, No. 20-50407 (5th Cir. Sep. 10, 2020) - Google Scholar". scholar.google.co.uk. Retrieved October 13, 2020.
^ Ura, Alexa (June 16, 2020). "Texas Democrats ask U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on voting by mail". The Texas Tribune. Retrieved June 18, 2020.
^ "Texas LULAC v. Hughs, No. 20-50867 (5th Cir. Oct 12, 2020)" (PDF).
^ "Court reinstates Texas limit on ballot drop-off locations". Associated Press. October 13, 2020.
^ Platoff, Emma (October 13, 2020). "Texas counties can offer only one drop-off ballot location, federal appeals court rules, upholding Gov. Greg Abbott's order". The Texas Tribune. Retrieved October 14, 2020.
^ "State of Texas v. Charles P. Rettig" (PDF). ca5.uscourts.gov. April 9, 2021. Retrieved October 5, 2021.

External links:{:(style="margin-right:0.25em"):}:[edit:{]}:

James C. Ho at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a public domain publication of the Federal Judicial Center.
Appearances at the U.S. Supreme Court from the Oyez Project
James C. Ho at U.S. Courts
James Ho at Ballotpedia

Legal offices	Legal offices	Legal offices
Preceded by Ted Cruz	Solicitor General of Texas 2008–2010	Succeeded by Jonathan F. Mitchell
Preceded by Carolyn Dineen King	Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit 2018–present	Incumbent

Legal offices

Preceded by

Ted Cruz

Solicitor General of Texas

2008–2010

Succeeded by

Jonathan F. Mitchell

Preceded by

Carolyn Dineen King

Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit

2018–present

Incumbent