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Judge James Ho


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2025 May 21, 10:19am   55 views  1 comment

by AmericanKulak   ➕follow (10)   ignore (3)  

This Judge is based. Excoriates the SCOTUS decision.

https://x.com/julie_kelly2/status/1924960201561800877






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1   Patrick   2025 May 21, 1:39pm  

https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/blind-justice-wednesday-may-21-2025


At least one federal judge is pushing back, in a darkly amusing fashion, on the Supreme Court’s decision to stay Trump’s gang member deportation plan. Yesterday, Rolling Stone ran the story headlined, “Trump Judge Slams Supreme Court, Says Courts Are 'Not a Denny’s’.” Displaying extraordinary judicial annoyance, Fifth Circuit Appellate Judge James Ho wrote a humdinger of an order castigating the Supreme Court’s decision.

There were too many good parts to include them all in today’s post. Read the whole thing for a laugh.

Judge Ho was the lead judge in a unanimous three-judge panel who entered the original decision denying a deportation stay that the Supreme Court reversed. Ho wasn’t so much upset about their stay (but not enthusiastic, either), as much as he was annoyed that the Supreme Court criticized him and his fellow judges for waiting 14 hours to rule on the ACLU’s emergency injunction motion.

Judge Ho, warming to his theme, began by criticizing the Supreme Court for its disrespect to the lower district judge, and not least of all to President Trump:

But I write to state my sincere concerns about how the district judge
as well as the President and other officials have been treated in this case. I
worry that the disrespect they have been shown will not inspire continued
respect for the judiciary, without which we cannot long function. See, e.g., In
re Westcott, 135 F .4th 243, 250-51 (5th Cir. 2025) (Ho, J., concurring).

Next, including a snappy line destined for a thousand echoing quotations, he wrote that it wasn’t his job, or any other court’s job, to keep the Executive Branch under control:

It is not the role of the judiciary to check the excesses of the other
branches, any more than it's our role to check the excesses of any other
American citizen.
Judges do not roam the countryside looking for
opportunities to chastise government officials for their mistakes.
Rather, our job is simply to decide those legal disputes over which
Congress has given us jurisdiction.

But it was the short deadline that bothered Ho the most. The Supreme Court waved aside the fact that the District Court had told the ACLU it would give the government one day (24 hours) to respond to the ACLU’s emergency motion, that it had filed just after midnight at 12:34 am. But around noon the next day, the ACLU gave the busy District judge an ultimatum—respond within 42 minutes or it would appeal to the Supreme Court.

The judge didn’t, couldn’t, meet the 42-minute deadline. So as promised, the ACLU appealed. The Supreme Court’s majority unnecessarily blamed its rare intervention on the District Court’s sloth, complaining that in 14 hours —counting from the midnight filing— it didn’t rule on the ACLU’s emergency motion. After reminding the Supremes how long they take to respond to emergency injunction motions (weeks and months), Judge Ho’s response to the 14-hour nonsense was not subtle:

But starting the clock at 12:34 a.m. not only ignores the court's express
instructions respecting the Government's right to respond. It also ignores
the fact that the Court is starting the clock at -12:34 a.m.
We seem to have forgotten that this is a district court -not a a Denny's.
This is the first time I've ever heard anyone suggest that district judges have
a duty to check their dockets at all hours of the night, just in case a party
decides to a file a motion.

Not a Denny’s! That’s gold. Judge Ho wondered whether the Supreme Court was creating a demanding new 14-hour response deadline for district courts. But if not, he wondered what it says about justice:

If this is not to become the norm, then we should admit that this is
special treatment being afforded to certain favored litigants like members of
Tren de Aragua -and we should stop pretending that Lady Justice is
blindfolded.

Ouch! And there was a lot more. Read it for edification and amusement.

It is often said that judges like Judge Ho on the Circuit Courts of Appeal are actually the most powerful judges in America, since the Supreme Court can only process a handful of appeals every year. So Judge Ho wasn’t just shouting into the whirlwind.

The Supreme Court deserved every bit of that withering criticism. It unfairly threw the district judge under the bus, just to create for itself an easy pretext to interfere in the case. Having said that, I should stress again that SCOTUS did not decide the merits. A new three-judge panel on the Fifth Circuit now has a chance to focus on the case, and if Judge Ho’s sentiments are any guide, the ACLU will be trying to dig itself out of a giant legal hole in the ground. It’s going to need a bigger shovel.

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