Judge is dinged for misconduct after criticizing Samuel Alito
A U.S. federal judge was found culpable of misconduct for questioning the ethics of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.
A complaint was filed against U.S. District Judge Michael Ponsor after he criticized Alito’s apparent decision to fly flags associated with election denialism and the far-right at his Virginia and New Jersey homes. Ponsor argued that Alito violated the public’s trust in allegedly doing so.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Chief Judge Albert Diaz of the federal appeals court in Richmond, Virginia, was assigned to the complaint and found Ponsor to have broken the public’s trust.
This past May, Ponsor wrote a New York Times op-ed about Alito titled “A Federal Judge Wonders: How Could Alito Have Been So Foolish?” In the piece, Ponsor questioned the thinking behind flying an upside-down American flag—a “stop the steal” symbol—and a far-right “Appeal to Heaven” flag outside Alito’s houses.
"The fact is that, regardless of its legality, displaying the flag in that way, at that time, shouldn’t have happened,” Ponsor wrote. “To put it bluntly, any judge with reasonable ethical instincts would have realized immediately that flying the flag then and in that way was improper. And dumb."
In his decision, Diaz wrote that Ponsor’s indiscretions included breaking rules against making a “public comment on the merits of a matter pending or impending in any court," and in favor of "act[ing] at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the impartiality of the judiciary." The matter, according to Diaz, was closed as Ponsor acknowledged violating the rules, apologized for his actions, and said he would seek ethics advice before writing for the public again.
In contrast, as calls grew for Alito’s recusal from cases related to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, Alito penned a missive defending his decision not to recuse himself that failed to inspire confidence in anyone whose surname wasn’t Alito.
Gallup released polling on Tuesday showing that Americans’ confidence in our judiciary has dropped to 35%. According to the analytics and polling company, it is one of the steepest declines in public confidence they have ever measured.
Between 2006 and 2020, Americans’ perceptions of their courts were most often in line with the median for OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries, with a majority in each typically expressing confidence.
However, the complaint against Ponsor won’t do much to change the public’s low regard for a radicalized Supreme Court that has rolled back human rights.