Stanford Law Added to Clerk Hire Boycott by US Judges Ho, Branch

US appeals court judges James Ho and Elizabeth Branch added Stanford to the law schools they won’t hire clerks from after students protested a speech by a fellow conservative judge.

Ho, a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and Branch, an Eleventh Circuit judge, previously said they wouldn’t hire future clerks from Yale Law, citing what they said was the school’s “cancel culture.” In a Saturday speech at Texas Review of Law & Politics’ annual banquet, Ho said that same policy will apply to Stanford Law School.

“We will not hire any student who chooses to attend Stanford Law School in the future,” Ho said in reference to himself and Branch, according to prepared remarks reviewed by Bloomberg Law.

Ho was being honored at the banquet as the Texas Review of Law & Politics’s Jurist of the Year. The remarks were first reported by the Free Beacon.

The move comes after Stanford students supporting LGBTQ rights protested a March 9 speech by Fifth Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan. The interaction made news after videos of Duncan and protesters facing off were posted online. Stanford administrators apologized to the judge for the disruption, which they said was against school policy.

Stanford Law Dean Jenny Martinez later announced in a ten-page letter that an administrator who stepped in during the speech was on leave and all students would be required to attend educational programming on free speech.

Ho, who has an undergraduate degree from Stanford, acknowledged the letter has received praise “for standing up for free speech” but said he doesn’t see it that way. Ho questioned the sincerity of the letter, calling it a “dramatic change of heart” after Martinez first defended administrators as “well intentioned.”

“Anyone can talk a big game about freedom of speech. We all know how to give flowery speeches about intellectual freedom. The recent letter from the Stanford Dean contains some good words, too. But that letter promises no meaningful, lasting institutional change to eradicate discrimination,” Ho said.

Stanford Law School didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about the boycott.

Ho and Branch previously wrote about the Duncan incident in the National Review, arguing that law schools should punish students who participate in “disruptive tactics” and said they’re failing to “teach students how to become good citizens.”

Ho’s initial boycott of Yale clerks, which Branch later joined, has received some pushback from lawyers and academics, some of whom argued it punishes students for grievances with the school administration. One fellow federal judge called the boycott “ugly.”

But Ho defended the boycott Saturday as a way to either influence the administration to change or show students they should choose another school. He said students and scholars at Yale “have gone out of their way” to tell him and Branch they support the boycott.

“In fact, some have admitted to us that they disagreed with us at first—but now that they’ve seen how the administration is reacting, they get it. And now they’re the ones urging us to keep it up—and not to pull back,” Ho said.

Tim Rosenberger, president of the Stanford chapter of the conservative Federalist Society, said that the judges are “showing real leadership in taking this step” and hoped more judges, if not, the broader profession would act as well. Rosenberger said he hoped Stanford wouldn’t be on the list for long and encouraged prospective students to continue applying to the school.

“I’m certainly ready to work with our school to get pulled off the blacklist, and I think we have a lot of really good ideas for how to address the concerns these judges have,” Rosenberger said.