[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 207 (Wednesday, December 1, 2021)]
[House]
[Pages H6741-H6744]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 COURTHOUSE ETHICS AND TRANSPARENCY ACT

  Mr. NADLER. 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.
  The Clerk read the title of the bill.
  The text of the bill is as follows:

                               H.R. 5720

       Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of 
     the United States of America in Congress assembled,

[[Page H6742]]

  


     SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

       This Act may be cited as the ``Courthouse Ethics and 
     Transparency Act''.

     SEC. 2. PERIODIC TRANSACTION REPORTS AND ONLINE PUBLICATION 
                   OF FINANCIAL DISCLOSURE REPORTS OF FEDERAL 
                   JUDICIAL OFFICERS.

       (a) Periodic Transaction Reporting Requirement for Federal 
     Judicial Officers.--
       (1) In general.--Section 103(l) of the Ethics in Government 
     Act of 1978 (5 U.S.C. App.) is amended by adding at the end 
     the following:
       ``(11) Each judicial officer.''.
       (2) Effective date.--The amendment made by paragraph (1) 
     shall apply to applicable transactions occurring on or after 
     the date that is 90 days after the date of enactment of this 
     Act.
       (b) Online Publication of Financial Disclosure Reports of 
     Federal Judicial Officers.--Section 105 of the Ethics in 
     Government Act of 1978 (5 U.S.C. App.) is amended--
       (1) by redesignating subsections (c) and (d) as subsections 
     (d) and (e), respectively; and
       (2) by inserting after subsection (b) the following:
       ``(c) Online Publication of Financial Disclosure Reports of 
     Judicial Officers.--
       ``(1) Establishment of database.--Not later than 180 days 
     after the date of enactment of the Courthouse Ethics and 
     Transparency Act, the Administrative Office of the United 
     States Courts shall establish a searchable internet database 
     to enable public access to any report required to be filed by 
     a judicial officer under this title.
       ``(2) Availability.--Not later than 90 days after the date 
     on which a report is required to be filed under this title by 
     a judicial officer, the Administrative Office of the United 
     States Courts shall make the report available on the database 
     established under paragraph (1) in a full-text searchable, 
     sortable, and downloadable format for access by the public.
       ``(3) Redaction.--Any report made available on the database 
     established under paragraph (1) shall not contain any 
     information that is redacted in accordance with subsection 
     (b)(3).''.
       (c) Technical and Conforming Amendments.--
       (1) Section 103(l) of the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 
     (5 U.S.C. App.) (as amended by subsection (a)(1)) is 
     amended--
       (A) in paragraph (9), by striking ``, as defined under 
     section 109(12)''; and
       (B) in paragraph (10), by striking ``, as defined under 
     section 109(13)''.
       (2) Section 105 of the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 (5 
     U.S.C. App.) (as amended by subsection (b)) is amended--
       (A) in subsection (a)(1), by striking ``be revealing'' and 
     inserting ``by revealing''; and
       (B) in subsection (b)--
       (i) in paragraph (1)--

       (I) in the first sentence, by striking ``be,,'' and 
     inserting ``be,''; and
       (II) in the third sentence, by striking ``may be may'' and 
     inserting ``may be, may''; and

       (ii) in paragraph (3)(A), by striking ``described in 
     section 109(8) or 109(10) of this Act'' and inserting ``who 
     is a judicial officer or a judicial employee''.
       (3) Section 107(a)(1) of the Ethics in Government Act of 
     1978 (5 U.S.C. App) is amended in the last sentence by 
     striking ``and (d)'' and inserting ``and (e)''.

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the rule, the gentleman from New 
York (Mr. Nadler) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Issa) each 
will control 20 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from New York.


                             General Leave

  Mr. NADLER. 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.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from New York?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. NADLER. 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. ISSA. 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

[[Page H6743]]

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

                              {time}  1400

  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. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire whether the majority is prepared 
to close. I reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. NADLER. 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. CICILLINE. 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. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.
  Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished 
gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Johnson), chairman of the subcommittee.
  Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. 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

[[Page H6744]]

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.
  Mr. ISSA. 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. NADLER. 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.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Lieu). The question is on the motion 
offered by the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler) that the House 
suspend the rules and pass the bill, H.R. 5720, as amended.
  The question was taken.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. In the opinion of the Chair, two-thirds 
being in the affirmative, the ayes have it.
  Mrs. GREENE of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and 
nays.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to section 3(s) of House Resolution 
8, the yeas and nays are ordered.
  Pursuant to clause 8 of rule XX, further proceedings on this motion 
are postponed.

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