Eleventh Circuit Chief Judge William Pryor seems like a good supervisor to have! Whether you’re a Democratic-appointed judge using your chambers to have sex with a police official whose department routinely shows up in your courthouse or a Republican-appointed judge using your chambers to video right-wing talk show appearances calling an Arab head covering a “terror scarf,” Pryor appears willing to provide as soft of a landing as possible.
Pryor himself had a busy Tuesday. That’s the day that the conservative jurist received a letter from some House Judiciary Republicans demanding to know why a federal judge who had sex in her chambers, attended a partisan campaign party, and then lied about it to two chief judges walked away with a private reprimand. He also signed an order clearing a different federal judge of everything.
It’s also the day that he dismissed the recent complaint against Judge Roy Altman of the Southern District of Florida — which we covered here — citing his repeated media hits filmed from his chambers where he trafficked in Islamophobic tropes including referring to the keffiyeh as a “terror scarf.” Pryor dismissed this complaint without appointing a special committee, finding the allegations “lack any factual foundation or are conclusively refuted by objective evidence.”
The dismissal brings a real “forest for the trees” energy to the inquiry. He accepts Judge Altman’s contention that he wasn’t using his chambers for extrajudicial work “to any substantial degree” — the Canon 4G standard — because he only participated in thirteen days of interviews across five months and never strained the office internet. Fair enough, though the problem was never really the precise time clocked on right-wing talk shows, but the imprimatur of authority and resulting appearance of impartiality conveyed when a federal judge uses a public office space to make sweeping claims about Islam running a vast conspiracy to control the media.
But it’s simply impossible, with my packed courtroom schedule, to drive thirty or forty minutes from my chambers to my house for a fifteen-, thirty-, or sixty-minute interview and then to drive thirty or forty minutes back to chambers — especially on days, like some of the ones Giannamore cites, in which I’ve sat through multiple such interviews on the same day.
Sure, though there is the third option of not doing the interviews at all. When the defense is that the book tour schedule was so demanding that he needed to use office time to avoid having to take even more time away, that’s not as compelling as… well, as Pryor seems to think it is.
Asked to defend the terror scarf line, Altman went for this:
To make the point by analogy, there’s nothing inherently wrong with the swastika. It is, in fact, an ancient symbol of Indian origins, having nothing to do with Jews. But no person acting in good faith would accept the claim that, because other cultures have embraced the swastika for innocuous reasons, a person who sprays a swastika on a wall in America today should be absolved of the antisemitic connotations it now carries.
Oh… no… maybe we don’t want to “well, actually” swastikas. The problem with this formulation is that Judge Altman also explains that he has never suggested “an Arab or Muslim man is supporting terrorism merely because he wears a keffiyeh.” The thing about the swastika comparison is that it only works because the symbol carries a single, settled modern meaning. If he’s taking the position that this head covering’s symbolic content is flexible by context, it undermines the idea that it’s taken on a fixed new meaning. Nobody argues a swastika is fine when Germans wear it and not when a college student does. Altman needs the keffiyeh to be an ordinary garment when he’s answering the bias charge, and a swastika when he’s defending the soundbite. It just doesn’t support both.
The dismissal doesn’t really tangle with these issues. Much like the private reprimand for Judge Ross — which tried to conceal her identity — and the subsequent shrug when she attempted to fulfill her already meager punishment with apology letters vague enough to be useless, the Eleventh Circuit seems to be a delightfully permissive jurisdiction to serve as a judge.
Jim Jordan, Darrell Issa, and Clay Fuller want Pryor to explain by September 15 how a private reprimand was supposed to restore public confidence in Judge Ross’s case. It’s a fair question that we asked in June, when the impeachment resolutions started landing. Something tells me that those legislators aren’t going to be as critical of this dismissal.
But they should be because they’re both bad. It’s acceptable to take a stern stance against the appearance of impropriety whether it’s a Democrat or Republican. Indeed, we used to do that as a country.
Altman’s response cites Above the Law by name in its first footnote, ahead of Zeteo and Al Jazeera, as proof the complaint was “leaked to the press in a transparent attempt to damage my reputation.” The complaint included a litany of receipts since most of the complained of conduct occurred on still available web shows, so any damage was already publicly available.
Though since Judge Pryor has, in fact, referred to me as “one of the great journalists of our time,” he probably didn’t bat an eye to see that footnote.
Earlier: Federal Judge Calls Arab Head Covering A ‘Terror Scarf’ As Part Of Persistent Anti-Muslim Rhetoric
Chief Judge Pryor Decides No Harm, No Foul Over Judge Ross’s Flimsy Apologies
You Will Not Believe The ‘Apology’ Letter Judge Eleanor Ross Wrote Her Clerks
Judge Eleanor Ross Impeachment Arrives Right On Schedule, Managing To Yet Again Botch The Standard
Judiciary Tried To Hide ‘Sex In Chambers’ Judge’s Name. It Left A Roadmap To Identify Eleanor Ross Instead.
Federal Judge Had Sex In Chambers Bringing New Meaning To Gavel Bang
Federal Judge Weeps For Poor Defenseless Federalist Society, Ruthlessly Bullied By Legal Bloggers
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.
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