John,

You may have heard that the Supreme Court recently heard a case about birth control access. What you may not have heard is that there’s an ethics issue with the case. We’re here to explain.

Donald Trump appointed Texas attorney James Ho to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2017. His wife Allyson went to work at his former employer, the prominent law firm Gibson Dunn.

Judge Ho served on the three-judge panel last summer that restricted mifepristone, a drug used in medication abortion.

The legal group that brought the mifepristone case, Alliance Defending Freedom, made at least six payments from 2018 through 2022 to Judge Ho’s wife, Allyson.

We need to be extremely clear about what this means: the spouse of a judge in a case that restricted access to mifepristone reported several payments worth at least several thousand dollars from the group behind the lawsuit.

That’s a real ethics problem—one that would likely be disqualifying if he were a federal prosecutor but which is not technically banned under the current judicial ethics code.

It’s unclear what Alliance Defending Freedom’s six payments to Allyson Ho were for, but ending abortion is a top goal of the organization – something that Judge Ho contributed to with his ruling.

What is clear is that Judge Ho should have recused himself to avoid an actual or perceived conflict of interest, even though the current ethics rules don’t explicitly require him to do so.

John, stories like this are exactly why public trust in the judiciary is eroding.

Thanks,

CREW