Courts

You Will Absolutely Believe James Ho's Financial Connection To Plaintiffs In The Abortion Pill Case

Republican jurists may not think women deserve autonomy over their own bodies, but they sure can have their own bank accounts -- that just *happen* to accept money from right wing sources with business before the judges.

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Judge James Ho Jim Ho

(via YouTube)

The dissent/concurrence in the abortion pill case penned by the Fifth Circuit’s James Ho is sure  attention grabbing. Ho would have gone even further to the right than the conservative majority and would have revoked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s decades-old approval of mifepristone and recognize an “aesthetic injury” — pulled (and misapplied) from environmental law for doctors that have patients who have abortions.

Now The Lever has a report on the financial entanglement between the judge and the Alliance Defending Freedom, one of the conservative forces behind that exact abortion case (ADF is primary counsel in the mifepristone case).

Which, come to think of it, sounds eerily familiar.

It seems Ho’s wife, Allyson Ho, a partner at Gibson Dunn, has repeatedly participated in events with — and accepted speaking fees from — you guessed it: the Alliance Defending Freedom. In fact, for every year between 2018 and 2021 she’s accepted honoraria from ADF (financial disclosures for 2022 are not yet available). The judiciary’s recusal rules leave quite a bit to be desired, so there’s not a clear violation of ethics, but as Gabe Roth of Fix the Court notes, it sure looks squiky:

“The bottom line is that any entity that is putting money in your spouse’s bank account raises a potential for impropriety if you sit on one of those cases,” said Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, a watchdog group that advocates for federal court reform. “The money was put there in the last couple of years, it’s not like that’s easily forgettable.”

And there are further overlaps between Allyson Ho’s advocacy work and ADF:

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Court filings show Allyson Ho separately worked alongside lawyers from the Alliance Defending Freedom on an unsuccessful petition to the Supreme Court arguing that justices should allow Christian county commissioners to begin hearings by requesting members of the public stand and join them in prayer.

Now, it’s completely likely Ho would have written the same decision if his family never got a penny from ADF. His jurisprudence has been reliably right wing and he seems eager to prove his conservative bona fides. But remember federal judges are supposed to avoid even the “appearance of impropriety,” and seeing counsel for the plaintiffs in a high profile case show up on a judge’s financial disclosure form without recusal gives off exactly that appearance.

James Ho responded to the controversy: “I consulted the judiciary’s ethics advisor prior to sitting in this case and was advised that there was no basis for recusal. In any event, Allyson’s practice is to donate honoraria to charity.”

Do we even want to know which charity? Because ADF is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit…

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Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Mastodon @Kathryn1@mastodon.social.

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