Judges’ Clerk Ban Over Israel-Hamas Protests Ethical, Panel Says

Federal judges who refused to hire university graduates over the handling of Israel-Hamas war protests didn’t violate ethics rules, an appeals court panel found.

The Aug. 2 decision by the Fifth Circuit Judicial Council upheld a June ruling by the circuit’s chief judge, Priscilla Richman, dismissing a complaint against eight unnamed judges.

The decision describes them as one circuit judge and seven district court judges, which would match the eight judges within the Fifth Circuit who’d announced they wouldn’t hire clerks who had graduated from Columbia University, starting with the class entering in 2024.

The group of 13 conservative judges total wrote Columbia’s president in May that they had “lost confidence” in the university over its handling of student protests against Israel over the war that led to the cancellation of Columbia’s main commencement ceremony. Signatories included Fifth Circuit Judge James Ho and seven Texas federal judges.

Richman found the judges “have discretion” to refuse to hire law clerks whose alma mater does not foster values they see as important, “such as viewpoint diversity and tolerance of differing viewpoint.”

Further, such a hiring policy is also “not evidence that the judge cannot remain impartial towards attorneys or parties who graduated from that university,” Richman said.

Richman noted that some judges have policies to only hire from top 10 law schools or from certain GPA percentiles, but those requirements don’t mean that those judges are biased against attorneys who appear before them who wouldn’t meet the criteria.

“Complainant’s conclusory allegation that the judges who are the subject of his complaint are generally biased against graduates of the university because they have categorically chosen not to hire them as law clerks, without more, does not support a finding of misconduct,” Richman said.

The complaint was initially filed by a state prisoner against one appellate judge and seven federal district judges, according to the decision.

The prisoner alleged that if the conservative judges are willing to collectively punish all graduates of one university, they are likely to “discriminate and retaliate” against those with different political views and “will be biased against any current or former member of the university’s community, whether appearing before them as an attorney or party,” the decision says.

Ethics watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility & Ethics called on the judiciary in June to review the hiring practices of judges who won’t consider clerks from certain universities, calling the boycotts “inappropriate” and “unethical.”

—With assistance from Jacqueline Thomsen.