[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 69 (Wednesday, April 27, 2022)]
[House]
[Pages H4521-H4523]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 COURTHOUSE ETHICS AND TRANSPARENCY ACT

  Mr. JEFFRIES. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the 
bill (S. 3059) 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.
  The Clerk read the title of the bill.
  The text of the bill is as follows:

                                S. 3059

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

     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 
                   JUDGES.

       (a) Periodic Transaction Reporting Requirement for Federal 
     Judges.--
       (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.
       ``(12) Each bankruptcy judge appointed under section 152 of 
     title 28, United States Code.
       ``(13) Each United States magistrate judge appointed under 
     section 631 of title 28, United States Code.''.
       (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 Judges.--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 
     Federal Judges.--
       ``(1) Establishment of database.--Subject to paragraph (4), 
     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 under this title by a judicial 
     officer, bankruptcy judge, or magistrate judge.
       ``(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, bankruptcy judge, or magistrate judge, 
     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).
       ``(4) Additional time.--
       ``(A) In general.--Subject to subparagraph (B), the 
     requirements of this subsection may be implemented after the 
     date described in paragraph (1) if the Administrative Office 
     of the United States Courts identifies in writing to the 
     relevant committees of Congress the additional time needed 
     for that implementation.
       ``(B) Publication requirement.--The Administrative Office 
     of the United States Courts shall continue to make the 
     reports described in paragraph (1) available to the public 
     during the period in which the Administrative Office of the 
     United States Courts establishes the database under this 
     subsection.''.
       (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. Jeffries) and the gentleman from California (Mr. Issa) each 
will control 20 minutes.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from New York.


                             General Leave

  Mr. JEFFRIES. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members 
may have 5 legislative days in which to

[[Page H4522]]

revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on S. 
3059.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the 
gentleman from New York?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. JEFFRIES. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, S. 3059, 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 Article III 
Federal judges and the conflicts, or appearance of conflicts, those 
holdings can create in the cases these judges are asked to preside over 
and 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 party or property under consideration.
  To help ensure that recusals occur as required, Federal law often 
mandates that judges file annual reports disclosing their personal 
financial interests so that the litigants, press, and the general 
public can monitor and check these responsibilities.
  Unfortunately, recent reporting by a Pulitzer Prize-winning 
investigative reporter and a hearing by the Judiciary Committee's 
Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet have 
shown that the law is not working as intended. The infrequency of 
judges' financial disclosures and the inaccessibility of the reports 
have made actual transparency practically impossible.
  When the House first passed this version of the legislation last 
year, an investigation revealed that, between 2010 and 2018, over 130 
Federal judges had decided cases in which they are part owners of the 
parties before them. Over 60 judges have actively traded shares in 
entities involved in their courthouse deliberations while their cases 
were still ongoing and, in some cases, profited from these trades.
  At the time, this investigation also discovered approximately 685 
cases where judges should have, according to the law, recused 
themselves. That number has continued to climb and now stands north of 
a thousand cases. So far, judges in 836 cases have notified the parties 
that the case can be reopened because the judge unlawfully failed to 
recuse.
  While these numbers are incredibly alarming on their own, they may 
simply be the tip of the iceberg. I am sorry to say that we can expect 
these numbers may continue to grow as more data becomes available and 
investigations continue.
  The consequences of these actions are both acute and widespread. 
Failure to recuse can cause real harm to parties seeking fair and 
impartial justice and leave a cloud of doubt over any decision that is 
made once the conflicts are subsequently uncovered.
  S. 3059 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.
  The bill also requires the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts 
to create an online database of judicial financial disclosure reports 
and to timely update that database with searchable, sortable, and 
downloadable copies of disclosure reports as they become available so 
that litigants, the press, and the public can analyze and access this 
information in real time.
  The two versions of this legislation, including the original version 
passed by the House and the bill currently before us, S. 3059, make two 
notable changes.
  First, it makes it crystal clear that these reforms also cover 
bankruptcy and magistrate court judges. This is a welcome change.
  Second, in response to concerns raised by the courts, it allows the 
Director of the Administrative Office of the Courts to take more than 
180 days to develop the public website and database containing judicial 
financial disclosure reports so long as the Director provides the 
Congress with a date certain when the website will launch. We expect 
that the Administrative Office of the Courts will request no more time 
than a few more months and will not use this authority to delay 
disclosure.
  These simple solutions are long overdue and the product of bicameral 
and bipartisan collaboration.
  I thank Congresswoman Ross for her leadership in this area and 
Congressman Issa for championing this legislation. I also thank my 
friend from Georgia (Mr. Johnson), chairman of the Subcommittee on the 
Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet, as well as Senator 
Cornyn and the other Senators who worked on this bipartisan bill.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support the legislation, and I 
reserve the balance of my time.

                              {time}  1230

  Mr. ISSA. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I 
join with the chairman in support of all of the changes that were added 
in the Senate, they were thoughtful, and I believe not just appropriate 
but necessary.
  I don't want to pile on the same statements made already because they 
were accurate and I agree with them. Rather, because there has been 
fairly public pushback from some members of the Article III court that 
we are meddling in their business, I have given it a lot of thought and 
discussed it with a number of scholars.
  I think the American people need to understand that the executive 
branch does not have the authority to pass laws, and the judicial 
branch does not have the ability to pass laws. When it comes to 
establishing laws for transparency reporting and the American people's 
right to know, there is, in fact, only one body that can initiate and 
send for the President's signature statutes of transparency and 
accountability.
  So even though this is a 1978 law being modified, the fact that there 
is pushback from a branch saying that under separation of powers we are 
somehow meddling by substantially harmonizing what the executive branch 
and this branch do to make sure the American people have confidence in 
what we own that might, in fact, be influencing what we do. It seems to 
be one of those areas in which I believe the American people, properly 
explained, would fully support.
  For that reason, I would hope that as this bill becomes law that the 
members of the court would recognize we had no choice. Faced with clear 
examples--even one being too much--of a judge who had holdings and 
simultaneously affected the value of those holdings while either owning 
them or trading them or both, we had no choice but to recognize that 
that absence of transparency was critical.
  I want to simply close by saying that this is likely not to lead to a 
lot more recusals. This is certainly going to lead to the kind of 
information that attorneys need to have on behalf of their clients when 
they are working through a case.
  If you know that a judge or his spouse or her spouse owns something, 
why wouldn't you be aware of that when you have a case involving that 
company? If you know that they own a substantial amount of a sister 
company, one that is not involved in the litigation, but in fact, could 
benefit by an adverse decision, the attorneys for both sides should 
know that.
  We are just not dealing in the failure to recuse here. Reporting 
transparency, in fact, empowers both sides to know the lay of the land 
that might be very meaningful in a case. Yes, there will be some that 
see that and ask for recusals. I trust that judges who, after the fact 
when these 130 cases were reported, some of the judges said they didn't 
know about it, they didn't know they had it, or they didn't know their 
spouse had these holdings. That may very well be true. Some of them 
said they didn't know they were supposed to report. That may be true.
  But when this is implemented we will be in a position to say, of 
course the public knew, and empowering the public on this not private 
information because ultimately we are public officials. I am a public 
official, the chairman is a public official, the Speaker is a public 
official, and so are those honored to serve as magistrates, bankruptcy 
judges, and Article III judges.

[[Page H4523]]

  I hope that this minor change will represent a major step for us in 
bringing back the confidence of the American people that they do not 
have to blindly go into a case not knowing whether the heavy hand of 
the law might be weighing against them without their knowledge.
  Mr. Speaker, it seems like only yesterday I was speaking on this 
subject.
  This is an important step. I know that we will have broad bipartisan 
support on it. I hope that we will have not just acceptance but an 
embracement by the judges who now will be reporting and providing more 
information to the public that the public has--and particularly 
litigants--have every right to know before they go before that judge.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank the chair for his help in shepherding this bill, 
and I yield back the balance of my time.
  Mr. JEFFRIES. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
  Mr. Speaker, the Framers, in their infinite wisdom, created a system 
of government with three separate and coequal branches: Article I, 
legislative branch; Article II, executive branch; and Article III, 
judicial branch, three separate but coequal branches of government.
  Justice Brandeis once said: In a democracy, sunlight is the best of 
disinfectants. There are standards of transparency and disclosure that 
already exist as relates to the Article I legislative branch and senior 
officials within the Article II executive branch. Those same standards 
of transparency and disclosure allowing for accountability should exist 
across the three branches of government. This legislation takes a 
meaningful step in that direction.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank Congresswoman Ross for her leadership. I thank 
Congressman Issa for his leadership. I thank Chairman Johnson, as well 
as Senator Cornyn, and those who have worked on this important 
legislation in a bipartisan, bicameral way.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this bill, and I yield 
back the balance of my time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the motion offered by the 
gentleman from New York (Mr. Jeffries) that the House suspend the rules 
and pass the bill, S. 3059.
  The question was taken; and (two-thirds being in the affirmative) the 
rules were suspended and the bill was passed.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

                          ____________________