Trump-Appointed Judge Takes Hard-Line Stance Against ‘Cancel Culture’

A Trump-appointed federal appeals court judge took a stand against cancel culture.

U.S. Circuit Judge James C. Ho said on Thursday he would no longer hire clerks from Yale Law School, which he said was plagued by “cancel culture” and students disrupting conservative speakers.

Yale “not only tolerates the cancellation of views — it actively practices it,” he said in a speech delivered at a Federalist Society conference in Kentucky.

He also urged other judges to boycott the school.

EXCLUSIVE: Judge James C. Ho of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit announced Thursday that he would no longer be hiring law clerks from Yale Law School and urged other judges to follow suit. | @njhochmanhttps://t.co/RlxVrNuvQf pic.twitter.com/XnRXR5F0VF

— National Review (@NRO) September 29, 2022

“Colleges aren’t teaching students how to agree to disagree. They’re teaching students how to destroy. And then they’re launching them into the world.”
—Judge James C. Ho of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, 9/29/22 https://t.co/Bv24LQd0Tx

— Larry Elder (@larryelder) September 29, 2022

“I don’t want to cancel Yale,” Ho, a member of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, said in prepared remarks reviewed by Reuters.

“I want Yale to stop cancelling people like me.”

Yale declined to comment.

Via Reuters:

In a speech largely focused on “cancel culture” censorship targeting conservatives on law school campuses, Ho cited a number of incidents at schools in which prominent figures had faced “campus vitriol.”

He previously defended Ilya Shapiro after students at Georgetown University’s law school urged that he be ousted from a new faculty position over Twitter posts he made questioning President Joe Biden’s pledge to nominate a Black woman to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Shapiro, a conservative legal scholar, was suspended but later cleared to become the executive director of Georgetown Law’s Center for the Constitution. But, he quit saying the school’s handling of the matter made working there “untenable.”

At Yale, “cancellations and disruptions seem to occur with special frequency,” Ho said.

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Among the events he cited was one in March in which Kristen Waggoner, now the president of the conservative religious rights group Alliance Defending Freedom, was disrupted by students supporting the LGBTQ community during a talk, which police attended.

Waggoner previously had defended a Colorado baker who refused to make a cake for a gay wedding in a case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

“Yale still hasn’t condemned the behavior of its law students last semester, so no one should be surprised when a federal judge notices,” Waggoner said in a statement.

Unsurprisingly, there has been pushback to Ho’s stance against cancel culture.

Law & Crime noted:

Ho, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump in 2018, has taken an aggressive and almost confrontational approach, according to an NPR report that says Ho’s aggressive rhetoric “exemplifies” the Trump era. Observers say that Ho, who has been an outspoken opponent of abortion rights and an ardent supporter of an expansive Second Amendment right to own firearms, has defied decades-old norms of the court and, according to NPR, may “embody President Trump’s most enduring legacy.”