Judges’ Boycott of Columbia in Clerk Hiring Is Permissible Under Judicial Ethics Rules
From Fifth Circuit Chief Judge Priscilla Richman’s June 24 opinion, which was affirmed earlier this month by an Appellate Review Panel of the Judicial Council for the Fifth Circuit (in an order signed by Judge Jennifer Elrod):
Complainant, a state prisoner, has filed a complaint against a United States Circuit Judge and seven United States District Judges.
The subject judges [together with] {judges from other circuits and districts} signed a letter addressed to the president of a university, criticizing the university for its asserted inaction with respect to protests following the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023. In the letter, the judges state that on the university’s campus “[d]isruptors have threatened violence, committed assaults, and destroyed property”; the university has become “an incubator of bigotry”; and “professors and administrators are on the front lines of the campus disruptions, encouraging the virulent spread of antisemitism and bigotry.” The judges state that they have lost confidence in the university as an institution of higher education, and that they will not hire law clerks with undergraduate or law degrees from the university starting with the entering class of 2024.
The judges assert the university should impose “[s]erious consequences for students and faculty who have participated in campus disruptions and violated” university rules concerning use of facilities and public spaces and threats against fellow members of the university community. The letter further asserts that the university “should also identify students” who engage in “unlawfully trespassing on and occupying public spaces” so that “future employers can avoid hiring them.” Otherwise, the letter concludes, “employers are forced to assume the risk anyone they hire from [the university] may be one of these disruptive and hateful students.”
The letter suggests the university should provide “[n]eutrality and nondiscrimination in the protection of freedom of speech and the enforcement of rules of campus conduct,” asserting that “[f]reedom of speech protects protest, not trespass, and certainly not acts or threats of violence or terrorism.” The judges assert “[i]t has become clear that [the university] applies double standards when it comes to free speech and student misconduct” and charge the university with “favoring certain viewpoints over others based on their popularity and acceptance in certain circles.” The judges express their view that “[s]ignificant and dramatic change in the composition of its faculty and administration is required to restore confidence in [the university].”
Complainant complains that “[i]f the Judges are willing to openly and collectively punish a university and its students and graduates, a reasonable
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