Courthouse Ethics and Transparency Act

Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 5720) to amend the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 to provide for a periodic transaction reporting requirement for Federal judicial officers and the online publication of financial disclosure reports of Federal judicial officers, and for other purposes, as amended.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill under consideration.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, H.R. 5720, the Courthouse Ethics and Transparency Act of 2021, embodies an important bipartisan effort to address an alarming lack of transparency in the personal financial holdings of Federal judges and the conflicts--or appearance of conflicts--those holdings can create in the cases those judges are asked to decide.

This legislation makes incremental but necessary progress toward accountability by building on Federal statutes that already prohibit judges from deciding cases in which they have a personal financial stake in the outcome.

It has been the law in this country since the 1970s that judges must recuse themselves from any case in which they hold a legal or equitable interest of any size in any property or party under consideration. To help ensure that recusals occur as required, Federal law also requires judges to file annual reports disclosing their personal financial interests so that litigants, the press, and the general public can check their work.

Unfortunately, recent reporting by prominent media outlets and a hearing by the Courts Subcommitee, have shown that the law is not working as intended. The infrequency of judges' financial disclosures and the inaccessibilty of the reports themselves have made actual transparency practically impossible.

The result is recent investigative reporting revealing that over 130 Federal judges have decided cases in which they are part owners of the parties before them; over 60 judges have actively traded shares in the parties in their courtrooms while cases are still going on, in some cases profiting on those trades.

The consequences of these actions are both acute and widespread. Failures to recuse can cause real harm to the parties whose cases are impacted and can leave a cloud of doubt over any law created from these cases once the conflicts are uncovered. Perhaps even more concerning, when the public sees members of their judiciary behaving in such a manner, their faith in their system of justice can be withered by cynicism and suspicion.

H.R. 5720 addresses these problems by requiring Federal judges to abide by the same periodic transaction reporting laws already applicable to Members of Congress and senior executive branch officials.

Further, the bill requires the Administrative Office of the United States Courts to create an online database of judicial financial disclosure reports and to timely update that database in searchable, sortable, and downloadable copies of disclosure reports as they become available so that litigants, the press, and the public can access and analyze that information in close to real time.

These simple solutions are long overdue and are the product of bipartisan, bicameral collaboration. I want to thank Congresswoman Ross and Congressman Issa for their leadership on this issue and for introducing this legislation. I also appreciate Ranking Member Jordan for working with us on this bill, and I want to thank Hank Johnson, chairman of the Subcommittee on the Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet for holding a hearing exposing the issues this bill addresses.

Madam Speaker, I urge all my colleagues to support this legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman North Carolina (Ms. Ross).

Mr. Speaker, we have additional speakers. I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Cicilline), a member of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Johnson), chairman of the subcommittee.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 5720 would make a meaningful difference in the accessibility and transparency of an entire branch of our Federal Government. It would strengthen trust in our courts and, in doing so, would strengthen our courts.

H.R. 5720 would establish a level playing field for access to critical government documents, allowing litigants, the public, and the press to enforce and ensure accountability.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support the bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, H.R. 5720 is a thoughtful piece of legislation authored by my colleague, Congresswoman Ross. It does something that seems like common sense when you look at it. Senior members of the executive branch, not just Cabinet officers or sub-Cabinet officers, but all of the most highly compensated individuals in the executive branch, similarly, the highly compensated members of this branch and Members of Congress, both the House and Senate and the Delegates, all routinely make these filings so that if a vote appears to be self- serving, the public is aware of it. This is important when you are looking at elective office.

But it is even more important, Madam Speaker, when you are looking at people who have a lifetime appointment, people who do not stand for election, and cases that may involve 10s or 100s of millions of dollars of company or individual money and the outcome, if later overturned due to the potential malpractice, such as the 60 judges who actually traded while cases were in front of them, the cost can be devastating in dollars.

But as the chairman so rightfully said, the cost can be more devastating in public confidence. I want to commend, on a bipartisan and bicameral basis, the work that has been done to recognize this oversight and, quite frankly, push against the members of the court who have not yet supported this and who somehow believe that these are exceptions and that somehow those exceptions are not sufficient to create a mandate on the third branch of government that is the equivalent almost identically of the first two.

It is a small step, and it does not affect a vast amount of judges who routinely look carefully at this.

There is one more thing that I think needs to be understood that members of the committee understand, and that is the available databases for these judges to appropriately do these tests

to find out whether they do have a potential conflict will need to be added.

So the legislation talks about reporting, but we will work diligently with the members of all the Federal courts to make sure the assets are available for them to quickly and routinely make these checks--the same as lawyers have had in the private sector for conflicts for many, many years now.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire whether the majority is prepared to close. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Once again, I want to thank the chairman, Ms. Ross, and the others who worked so diligently on this legislation.

In closing, I think the judicial branch needs to take notice of the vote here today, not because we vote overwhelmingly in support of this legislation, but because we stand here today trying to vividly separate 130 judges who either didn't know or knew and did not do the right thing from 600 or so that sit on the bench today, and, over the period of this investigation, more than 1,000 Federal judges who do the right thing, who are careful in their personal life and in their disclosures, who do recuse themselves.

The confidence in the court belongs to the overwhelming majority of judges at the district court, at the appellate court, at the Federal circuit, and, yes, at the Supreme Court, who carefully maintain their personal lives, personal matters, and their family assets in a way that they can be accountable. And when in doubt, many of them recuse themselves even when it is a judgment call.

So I want to thank the many in our third branch of government who do the right thing as we bring about this new era of transparency that has become necessary because of the bad action of 130 judges.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the Courthouse Ethics and Transparency Act. This commonsense, bipartisan, bicameral legislation would serve to fill a transparency void that plagues our current Federal judicial system as recently exposed in a Wall Street Journal series of reports.

According to these reports, 131 Federal judges broke the law by hearing cases where they had a financial interest. From 2010 to 2018, these judges failed to recuse themselves from 685 lawsuits involving firms in which they or their families held stock, and today the number could be much higher.

This failure has real-world repercussions for the American public and American families.

Take, for example, Jacob and Jeanetta Springer. They were foreclosed upon in 2018 after Jeanetta's ailing father missed one mortgage payment 3 months before his passing.

Upon inheriting the property, the Springers sought to challenge the foreclosure in Federal court, believing they were behind on fewer payments than the bank had claimed. The case was dismissed on the recommendation of the magistrate judge and again on appeal. But the Springers were soon notified by the court that their judge had purchased the bank's stock before issuing the ruling.

As a result, their case was reopened and assigned to a different judge. In frustration, Jacob Springer asked: ``How was I supposed to know the judge owned the stock?''

The Springer family's experience demonstrates the importance of ensuring both justice and the appearance of justice in our courtrooms. The impression of impropriety threatens the trust litigants place in judges to be impartial and disinterested arbiters of justice and the very institutional legitimacy of our judiciary.

The Springer family's experience was not the first time a litigant has had their faith in the promise of blind justice shaken by the lack of transparency in our judiciary. But today, we can move toward making it the last by passing the Courthouse Ethics and Transparency Act.

This bill will make Federal judges more accountable, transparent, and ethical, and restore confidence in our Federal courts. The legislation will ensure Federal judges face the same financial transaction disclosure requirements as members of the legislative and executive branches, eliminating an unwarranted transparency gap.

It also requires the online publication of judges' financial disclosures on a publicly accessible database. This online database will add another layer of protection from potential conflicts.

Litigants like the Springer family would be able to identify conflicts sooner instead of solely relying on the ineffective recusal processes that currently are in place. This bill does so without compromising the safety of Federal judges or their families because it incorporates existing confidentiality rules that enable judges to redact sensitive information. The database will simply streamline access to information already legally required to be available to the public.

I want to thank Judiciary Committee Chairman Nadler, Subcommittee Chairman Johnson, cosponsor and Subcommittee Ranking Member Issa, and Representative Chip Roy for working with me to introduce this crucial legislation. We must restore trust in the American promise of free and fair administration of justice in our courtrooms.

For this reason, I urge my colleagues to support this bill to increase transparency and accountability in our courtrooms.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of this important legislation that will bring greater transparency to the judges adjudicating cases every day all across this country.

Most high-level government officials in all three branches of government, including Federal Justices and judges, must file annual financial disclosure reports. For Members of Congress, as well the President, Vice President, and other executive branch officials, these disclosures are readily available and searchable online. This makes the information easy for the American people to obtain, and this tool is vital to a transparent government.

Federal judges and Justices, however, do not have to make their disclosures readily available to the public online. It often takes the public months to request this information under the current disclosure system.

This delay in information often prevents the public from being able to determine if a judge has a financial interest in a certain court case in a timely manner, effectively weakening the enforcement of recusal requirements even if there is a conflict of interest.

I am sure many or most judges willingly recuse themselves from cases in which they have an interest, but a Wall Street Journal investigation found that this is not always the case. That investigation found that since 2010, more than 130 Federal judges have not recused themselves in nearly 700 cases where they or a family member had a financial interest, an unacceptable breach of the public's trust.

For example, in one case, a judge denied a class action motion against Microsoft, which he held stock in, potentially saving the company more than $45 million. These kinds of conflicts must be transparent.

The bipartisan Courthouse Ethics and Transparency Act of 2021 would increase transparency and empower the public by mandating that Federal judges' financial disclosures are publicly available and searchable within 90 days of filing. This will allow the public to access these disclosure forms more easily, providing the information we need to ensure fair proceedings and necessary recusals.

I thank Congresswoman Ross for introducing this extremely important legislation, and I thank her for her leadership. I also want to thank Representative Johnson and Representatives Roy and Issa for taking the lead on this important bill.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support it, and I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 5720, which I hope will be only the first in a series of reforms from this body to assist our courts in maintaining the appearance of impartiality, which is so essential to the judicial function.

Perhaps more than any other branch, the judiciary relies on the public's perception of its rectitude, its rejection of bias, and its commitment to fairness as a necessary predicate to the accomplishment of its work. The more the public trusts our judges, the more willing the public is to accept their judgments.

Alexander Hamilton wrote that judges do not have armies to enforce. They do not have appropriations to encourage. They have only their impeccable reasoning and their unimpeachable objective, which together ensure acceptance of their decisions.

That is why after The Wall Street Journal's investigative reporting revealed widespread failures in the judiciary's compliance with a straightforward conflict of interest statute, my Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet Subcommittee promptly held a hearing to examine why those failures occurred and what we could do to help the judiciary avoid making them in the future.

I am pleased that Representative Ross and the ranking member of the

subcommittee, Representative Issa, immediately advanced a bill designed specifically to rectify this systemic problem, and I am proud to support it.

This bill provides the judiciary with much-needed tools to ensure not only its actual objectivity but the appearance of actual objectivity, both of which are critical to ensure the continued vitality of the judiciary.

It also welcomes the public, the press, and the parties to lawsuits into the process for ensuring judicial impartiality by making records of judges' financial interests publicly available and freely available.

This interbranch cooperation, as the Constitution intends, is what is needed at this time. Congress needs the courts because justice is the foundation of our democracy. The courts need Congress to furnish them with the statutory tools necessary to ensure that justice satisfies the appearance of justice.

Our courts and our country will be better for the passage of this bill.