The federal judiciary is considering whether it needs new ethical guidance on hiring law clerks following controversy involving two judges who hired a clerk accused of racist conduct while at a conservative advocacy group. The clerk later secured a prestigious clerkship with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
The U.S. Judicial Conference, the judiciary’s policymaking body, released a report on its closed-door March 12 meeting, stating it referred the question of whether new guidance was needed to its Committee on Codes of Conduct. Meanwhile, it tasked the Committee on Judicial Conduct and Disability with examining whether to modify rules addressing potential incompatibilities in current policies governing judicial misconduct cases.
One rule allows the committee to review orders by a circuit’s judicial council dismissing misconduct complaints to decide if an investigative committee should be appointed. However, a statute states that a council’s order upholding a chief judge’s dismissal of such a case is final. These conflicting policies influenced a decision last year that ended a misconduct case involving Chief U.S. Circuit Judge William Pryor of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and U.S. District Judge Corey Maze in Birmingham, Alabama.
Arthur Hellman, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh specializing in federal judicial ethics, noted the review’s broad scope might address other controversies involving clerk hiring. He highlighted recent incidents where conservative federal judges announced they would boycott hiring clerks from specific law schools in response to campus demonstrations and disruptions.
“The Committee on Codes of Conduct would also need to consider this because it raises similar issues,” Hellman said.
The case involving Pryor and Maze began with a 2021 letter from seven Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives requesting an investigation into the judges’ decision to hire Crystal Clanton as a clerk. Clanton, the former national field director for the conservative student group Turning Point USA, was accused in a 2017 New Yorker magazine article of sending a racist text message to a colleague stating “I HATE BLACK PEOPLE … I hate blacks. End of story.”
Clanton, who was unreachable for comment on Monday, told the New Yorker in 2017 that she had no recollection of the messages and they “do not reflect what I believe or who I am.” After leaving Turning Point, Clanton was hired by Ginni Thomas, Justice Thomas’ wife, for media ventures, lived with the Thomases for a time, and later attended George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School. She subsequently secured clerkships with Maze and Pryor. Thomas has stated he recommended Pryor hire Clanton.
Lawmakers argued that if Pryor and Maze were aware of Clanton’s history, their hiring decisions could be seen as endorsing discrimination, undermining judicial integrity, and violating ethical rules. The judges, who did not respond to requests for comment on Monday, previously asserted they found the claims about Clanton false before hiring her.
In January 2022, the 2nd Circuit initially cleared them of wrongdoing, but in July 2023, the Judicial Conference’s Committee on Judicial Conduct and Disability directed a committee to investigate further. In November 2023, the 2nd Circuit declined to reconsider its initial decision, after Pryor and Maze argued that a 2008 rule allowing the national conduct committee to order the circuit council to act conflicted with the text of the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act of 1980.
