Lots more in the Guardian article.
When the former president Donald Trump appointed the Texas attorney James Ho to the fifth circuit court of appeals in 2017, lawyers at the prominent law firm Gibson Dunn – where Ho worked before his appointment – had a problem: how to replace the politically connected Ho. Turns out, they didn’t even need to change the home address for his replacement. Ho’s wife, Allyson, moved into her husband’s position and his old office.
Meet the Hos.
Few people outside of legal circles have heard of the Hos, yet the couple is tied to the case before the US supreme court that will determine women’s access to mifepristone, a drug commonly used in medication abortions. The court hears arguments in the case on Tuesday.
Ho served on the three-judge panel last summer that ruled to restrict access to mifepristone. The legal group behind the mifepristone case, Alliance Defending Freedom, made at least six payments from 2018 through 2022 to his wife, Allyson, a powerhouse federal appellate lawyer who has argued in front of the supreme court and has deep connections to the conservative legal movement that has led the attack on the right to abortion in the US.
This dude’s mom is a ho
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Few people outside of legal circles have heard of the Hos, yet the couple is tied to the case before the US supreme court that will determine women’s access to mifepristone, a drug commonly used in medication abortions.
“When Americans see a case like this – so clearly concocted and motivated by special interests, and with evident connections between those interests and the judges on the case, it does tremendous damage to the reputation of the courts, and to the public trust in their ability to give all litigants an even shake,” said Alex Aronson, the executive director of the nonpartisan group Court Accountability and a former chief counsel to the Democratic senator Sheldon Whitehouse.
In an email to the Guardian, James Ho wrote that he “consulted our court’s ethics advisor prior to sitting in that case, and was advised that there was no basis for recusal.
The Hos are just one of the increasing number of power couples in the conservative movement in which the wife of a prominent official works in the background, laying the groundwork for Republican policies that their spouses will rule upon or legislate.
He has suggested that protection orders in domestic violence cases “are too often misused as a tactical device in divorce proceedings – and issued without any actual threat of danger”.
The group helped write the Mississippi law that led to the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v Wade and ended the 50-year-old constitutional right to an abortion.
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