[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.
____________________