| James Ho | |||||||||||
| Office: | Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit | ||||||||||
| Appointer: | Donald Trump | ||||||||||
| Term Start: | January 4, 2018 | ||||||||||
| Predecessor: | Carolyn Dineen King | ||||||||||
| Order1: | 4th | ||||||||||
| Office1: | Solicitor General of Texas | ||||||||||
| 1Namedata1: | Greg Abbott | ||||||||||
| Term Start1: | May 12, 2008 | ||||||||||
| Term End1: | December 9, 2010 | ||||||||||
| Predecessor1: | Ted Cruz | ||||||||||
| Successor1: | Jonathan F. Mitchell | ||||||||||
| Birth Date: | February 27, 1973 | ||||||||||
| Birth Place: | Taipei, Taiwan | ||||||||||
| Education: | Stanford University (BA) | ||||||||||
| Spouse: | [1] | ||||||||||
| Children: | 2 | ||||||||||
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James Chiun-Yue Ho (; born February 27, 1973) is a Taiwanese-born American lawyer and jurist serving since 2018 as a U.S. circuit judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He was appointed by President Donald Trump. Ho formerly served as Solicitor General of Texas from 2008 to 2010. He has been identified as a potential Supreme Court nominee should Donald Trump be reelected in 2024.[2] [3] [4]
Ho was born on February 27, 1973, in Taipei, Taiwan. Immigrating with his family to the United States when he was a child, Ho grew up in San Marino, California.[5] At age nine, Ho became a naturalized citizen of the United States.[6] He then attended the Polytechnic School, a private school located in Pasadena where he became the editor-in-chief of the school newspaper, The Paw Print.[7] Ho was a high school classmate of Leondra Kruger, who later became a judge of the Supreme Court of California.[8]
After high school, Ho studied public policy at Stanford University, graduating in 1995 with a Bachelor of Arts with honors. He then spent a year at California State University, Sacramento, as a California Senate Fellow, then was a legislative aide to Quentin L. Kopp. He then attended the University of Chicago Law School,[9] where he was an editor of the University of Chicago Law Review. He graduated in 1999 with a Juris Doctor degree with high honors and membership in the Order of the Coif.
After graduating from law school, Ho was a law clerk to Judge Jerry Edwin Smith of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit from 1999 to 2000. He was in private practice in Washington, D.C., at the law firm Gibson Dunn from 2000 to 2001. From 2001 to 2003, Ho was an attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, first in the Civil Rights Division in 2001 and then in the Office of Legal Counsel from 2001–2003. He was Chief Counsel to subcommittees of the Senate Judiciary Committee from 2003 to 2005 under Republican Senator John Cornyn.[10] He then clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas from 2005 to 2006.
After his Supreme Court clerkship, Ho returned to private practice at Gibson Dunn in its Dallas office from 2006 to 2008 and 2010 to 2017. From 2008 to 2010, he was the Solicitor General of Texas in the Office of the Attorney General of Texas, replacing Ted Cruz in that position. As Texas solicitor general, Ho led the state's lawsuits against the Obama administration.
Ho has worked as a volunteer attorney with the First Liberty Institute, a religious legal advocacy organization.[11] [12] He has held multiple positions as a member of the Federalist Society since 1996.[13]
On September 28, 2017, President Donald Trump announced his intent to nominate Ho as a Circuit Judge to an undetermined seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.[14] Cruz had promoted Ho as a candidate for a vacancy on the court.[14] On October 16, 2017, Trump sent Ho's nomination to the Senate. He was nominated to the seat vacated by Judge Carolyn Dineen King, who assumed senior status on December 31, 2013.[15] On November 15, 2017, a hearing on his nomination was held before the Senate Judiciary Committee.[16] On December 7, 2017, his nomination was reported out of committee by an 11–9 vote.[17] On December 13, 2017, the United States Senate invoked cloture on his nomination by a 53–44 vote.[18] On December 14, 2017, Ho's nomination was confirmed by a 53–43 vote.[19] He received his judicial commission on January 4, 2018. He was sworn in by Justice Clarence Thomas at the private library of Texan real estate billionaire and Republican donor Harlan Crow.[20]
On September 9, 2020, Trump included Ho on a list of potential nominees to the Supreme Court.[21] Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett, who was confirmed. Ho has again been identified as a potential Supreme Court nominee should Donald Trump be reelected in 2024.[22] Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) stated in June 2024 that he believes Ho "has done a terrific job on the 5th [Circuit]" and that Ho is "principled" and "will be immune to the Greenhouse effect.”[23] Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) has also expressed support for Ho's elevation to the Supreme Court.[24] Ho was named to the shortlist of presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.[25]
On September 29, 2022, Ho delivered a speech at a Federalist Society conference in Kentucky and said he would no longer hire law clerks from Yale Law School, which he said was plagued by "cancel culture" and students disrupting conservative speakers. Ho said Yale "not only tolerates the cancellation of views — it actively practices it.", and he urged other judges to likewise boycott the school.[26] [27] U.S. Circuit Judge Elizabeth L. Branch of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit confirmed her participation in the Yale boycott in a statement to National Review. Branch told the National Review that Ho raised "legitimate concerns about the lack of free speech on law school campuses, Yale in particular," and that she would not consider students from Yale for clerkships in the future.[28]
On May 6, 2024, Ho cosigned a letter alongside twelve federal judges, which he shared with CNN, vowing not to hire Columbia University law students or undergraduates for concerns that the university is not doing enough to counter students protesting the war in Gaza.[29] Ho asked in the letter that the university should identify "students who engage in such conduct so that future employers can avoid hiring them. If not, employers are forced to assume the risk that anyone they hire from Columbia may be one of these disruptive and hateful students."[30]
Ho has been outspoken against illegal immigration, suggesting “a sovereign isn’t a sovereign if it can’t control its borders” and that “[o]ur national objectives are undercut when states encourage illegal entry into the United States.”[31] [32] He has stated that “[i]f only ‘the political branches of the federal government’ can decide if a state has been invaded, it effectively prohibits states from exercising their sovereign right of self-defense without federal permission.”[33] Ho has also defended the use of the term “alien,” arguing it should not be seen as offensive, noting that “[i]t’s a centuries-old legal term found in countless judicial decisions.”[34]
On April 18, 2018, in his first written opinion as a Fifth Circuit judge, Ho dissented from a denial of a rehearing en banc in a case regarding a limit on campaign contributions. The Fifth Circuit three-judge panel upheld the constitutionality of a City of Austin ordinance setting an individual campaign contribution limit of $350 per election for candidates for mayor and city council, rejecting the plaintiff's claim that the limit violated the First Amendment. In his dissent, Ho argued the court "should have granted rehearing en banc and held that the Austin contribution limit violates the First Amendment" and asserted that "if there is too much money in politics, it's because there's too much government."[35] [36] [37]
Ho described abortion as a "moral tragedy" in one of his rulings which upheld a Texan law that required abortion facilities to bury or cremate fetal remains.[38]
In 2019, Ho authored a concurring opinion in the Mississippi abortion case Jackson Women's Health Organization v. Dobbs, 945 F.3d 265 (2019), criticizing the lower court for failing to respect the State's arguments in support of the Mississippi Gestational Age Act. This case later went to the Supreme Court and was the occasion for Justice Alito's 2022 opinion that declared Roe v. Wade and Casey overruled.
In 2020, Ho was a member of a panel that stayed a preliminary injunction entered by U.S. District Judge Fred Biery that expanded the right to use a mail-in ballot to all Texas voters during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic (allowing broader use of mail-in voting than under the Texas Election Code, which entitled only Texas voters over age 65 to vote absentee without an excuse). Ho wrote a separate concurring opinion favoring the state officials.[39] [40] [41] [42] [43]
In 2020, Ho wrote a concurring opinion in another voting rights case, involving a challenge to Texas Governor Greg Abbott's order restricting the number of drop-off locations for mail-in ballot to one per county. Abbott's order closed dozens of drop-off locations in populous, heavily Democratic urban areas in Texas. The order was challenged by civil rights groups, and the district court held that the order violated the constitutional right to vote. Ho joined a Fifth Circuit order that stayed the district court's ruling and held that the governor's order did not infringe the right to vote. In a concurring opinion, Ho wrote that Texas election law should not be "rewritten" by "executive fiat" or "judicial fiat."[44] [45] [46]
In April 2020, Ho wrote a dissent when the Fifth Circuit refused to rehear en banc a panel opinion finding that a community college board violated the First Amendment when it censured one of its members.[47] The Supreme Court of the United States then reversed the Fifth Circuit in Houston Community College System v. Wilson (2022).[48]
On April 9, 2021, Ho dissented when the Fifth Circuit refused to hear en banc on a case regarding the Certification Rule used to help implement the Affordable Care Act. Ho and four other judges would have struck down the Certification Rule.[49]
On September 9, 2021, Ho authored the majority opinion for an en banc panel in Helix Energy Solutions Group, Inc. v. Hewitt, interpreting a provision of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. Ho was affirmed the U.S. Supreme Court in an opinion authored by Justice Elena Kagan.[50]
On February 22, 2023, Ho wrote a sharply worded dissent from denial of rehearing after the Fifth Circuit granted qualified immunity to officials who jailed their critics. Ho wrote that the Fifth Circuit left Americans "vulnerable to public officials who choose to weaponize criminal statutes against citizens whose political views they disfavor."[51] [52]
On March 2, 2023, Ho wrote a concurrence in an amended opinion in United States v. Rahimi, pointing out the lack of constitutional safeguards for civil protective orders and claiming they are subject to abuse.[53]
In August 2023, a dissenting opinion by Ho was published in which he argued that Catholic medical providers had legal standing to sue over abortion pill mifepristone because: "Doctors delight in working with their unborn patients—and experience an aesthetic injury when they are aborted"; Ho cited past court cases on the environment where it was ruled that people experienced aesthetic injuries when animals or plants were threatened.[54] [55] [56]
On November 17, 2023, Ho wrote a concurrence in United States v. Kersee, a case concerning a violation of the Sixth Amendment; Ho emphasized the importance of constitutionality of legal proceedings against the accused, citing United States v. Rahimi as a particular example.[57]
Ho is married to Allyson Paix Newton Ho (née Newton, formerly Heidelbaugh), a partner in the Dallas office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and co-chair of the firm's appellate practice group who clerked for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. They have twin children, a daughter and son.[58]
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