James Ho Quits Judges Group Over Statement Against Threats

Fifth Circuit Judge James Ho said he’s resigning from a judicial group after it spoke up in defense of judges who’ve been criticized and threatened, as billionaire Elon Musk and others lash out at members of the federal judiciary ruling against Trump administration policies.

Speaking at a Federalist Society event on Saturday, Ho said he decided to resign after the Federal Judges Association sent a statement following these latest attacks, but not in defense of US Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, or Brett Kavanaugh, as well other federal judges in Florida or Texas.

“You can’t say that you’re in favor of judicial independence only when it comes to decisions that you like,” the conservative jurist said at the Federalist Society’s National Student Symposium. “That’s not protecting the judiciary, that’s politicizing the judiciary.”

Ho, a Donald Trump appointee, said he thinks statements like the one sent by FJA might “harm the very cause that they’re trying to further.”

Ho said the group may be saying they either aren’t actually seriously committed to judicial independence, or they do care “but there are just some people who have views that are so anathema to you that don’t think they are worthy of this principle.”

“What you may think is a statement born of righteousness, I think, is perceived by a lot of people as merely sanctimonious,” Ho said.

A representative for the Federal Judges Association didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

Allyson Ho, co-chair of Gibson Dunn’s appellate and constitutional law practice and the judge’s wife, also said at the event that she doesn’t recall people who are speaking out about threats to the rule of law and criticizing lawyers for their clients also raising concerns when attorneys for Trump and his administration faced backlash.

“When you’re not being consistent about it, then it really—it can only be about whose ox is being gored, and the sense that, in a way, only underscoring that the rule of law means one thing if you agree with me and another thing if you don’t,” Allyson Ho said.

Judge Ho has been a vocal member of the judiciary. He’s announced boycotts of clerks from Yale Law School, Stanford Law School, and Columbia University over those institutions’ handling of student protests, and spoke out against the federal judiciary’s nonbinding policy against “judge shopping,” or litigants filing in certain courts to try and get their cases heard by a judge they view as friendly.