via Poltico
Kacsmaryk said in a statement Friday that the redactions were approved by the Administrative Office of the Courts “after reviewing the relevant rules and applicable threats.”
The private company, he said, is not headquartered or operated in Texas and has never been a party in the Northern District of Texas, where he sits. “The Clerk’s Office has the name of the entity, actively screens incoming cases, and I would be automatically recused from any cases involving this entity,” Kacsmaryk said.
What information judges report or omit from annual disclosure forms has become a flash point for court transparency advocates, who say the federal judiciary — and the Supreme Court in particular — lacks accountability to the public. In response to complaints from Congressional Democrats, leaders of the federal court system are reviewing whether Justice Clarence Thomas violated federal ethics laws by not disclosing his lavish travel and real estate deals with Texas business executive and GOP donor Harlan Crow.
Legal ethics experts characterized Kacsmaryk’s redactions as highly unusual and said withholding the name of a stock undermines the purpose of the disclosure system. Stephen Gillers, an ethics expert at New York University Law School, said litigants need to know the identity of the investments a judge holds to decide whether they should seek that judge’s recusal from a case.
“Removing that name is exactly contrary to the reason we want it revealed,” Gillers said. “If there’s one thing you want to know in a financial disclosure form, it’s where the judge has his or her investments.”
Federal ethics law states that redactions are allowed to “protect the individual who filed the report or a family member” for “as long as the danger to such individual exists.” The fact that judiciary leaders signed off on Kacsmaryk’s redactions, which were first reported Friday afternoon by CNN, suggests there is a serious security concern about making the name of the company public.
Kacsmaryk, a Trump nominee with long-held antiabortion views, issued an unprecedented ruling this month to undo government approval of mifepristone, part of a two-drug regimen widely used to terminate early pregnancies. Kacsmaryk sided with challengers who said the Food and Drug Administration did not follow proper procedure or sufficiently consider safety concerns when it first approved mifepristone in 2000 and when it made the drug easier to access in 2016. The Supreme Court put his ruling on hold late Friday pending an appeal.
The name of the company in which Kacsmaryk holds stock could not be confirmed on Friday. As a candidate for the federal bench in August 2017, Kacsmaryk reported owning $2.9 million in Publix Super Markets common stock in his Senate disclosure form, which like the judicial disclosure form is a public document.
Kacsmaryk’s paternal grandmother, Mary Lacek Kacsmaryk, worked for Publix for more than 25 years, joining the Florida-based supermarket company early in its history, according to her obituary.
“Anyone who knew Mary K, as she was known at Publix, knew her passion and pride for being a Publix team member,” the May 2017 obituary says.
Top officials from the three branches of government, including judges and Supreme Court justices, are required to file annual forms detailing their finances, outside income and spouses’ sources of income. The judiciary’s Committee on Financial Disclosures, made up of 16 federal judges, reviews and approves redaction requests, of personal or sensitive information that “could directly or indirectly endanger the filer” or a family member.
The regulations state, however, that “it would be unusual for a request for the redaction of the identity of a stock or other security to be granted.”
A spokesperson for the committee said the panel “does not comment on individual judges’ financial disclosure reports or redaction requests for confidentiality reasons.” Judges must renew requests for redactions each year for the committee to assess whether there is an ongoing security concern.
Kacsmaryk’s rulings have prompted some backlash. In a phone call with lawyers in the abortion pill litigation, he mentioned death threats and harassing voices mails his chamber has received.
He took the highly unusual step of delaying public notification of a hearing in the case, saying he wanted to limit the opportunity for potential disruption.
The judge was confirmed by the Senate in 2019. In subsequent financial disclosure reports for 2020 and 2021, the name of his only stock holding and most significant investment is redacted. Kacsmaryk provides a short explanation in the 2020 report, writing that a trust in his name terminated, and as the beneficiary, the shares of the unnamed stock “held in trust were distributed upon liquidation of the trust & I now hold those shares personally.”
The shares in the most recent form are reported as having a value in the range of $5 million to $25 million. He also reported receiving a dividend from the stock of as much as $1 million.
William Edward Palin, a software developer and lawyer at the Free Law Project, which created a public database of the financial disclosure forms, has reviewed thousands of forms and said very few have the entire name of a stock blacked out.
“Kacsmaryk’s entire net worth seems to be wrapped up in the one stock that is redacted,” Palin said. “It negates the entire purpose of the financial disclosures if 96 percent of this judge’s net worth is hidden from the general public. It’s clear as day.”
Gabe Roth, director of the court transparency nonprofit Fix the Court, agreed that “it makes very little sense” to allow the redaction — though neither he nor Palin had any information about the reason it was approved.
“One of the ways that the public conducts accountability for judges and justices is by reviewing their financial reports,” Roth said.
Kacsmaryk has been criticized by members of Congress for not being forthcoming during his confirmation process. The Washington Post reported last week that Kacsmaryk did not disclose that he submitted an article to a law review criticizing Obama-era protections for transgender people and had asked that his name be removed from the article.
via Washington post
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