Rep. Roy applauds House passage of bipartisan government transparency bill to hold federal judges accountable

Press Release

Rep. Chip Roy (TX-21) issued the following statement Wednesday upon the House's passage of the bipartisan Courthouse Ethics and Transparency Act (H.R. 5720), of which he was a lead cosponsor.

Trust in our judicial system demands clear impartiality of the judges. The Courthouse Ethics and Transparency Act is a great step in providing parity to the Judiciary and putting Judges on par with the Executive and Legislative branch's public financial disclosure rules.

In response to reports that 131 federal judges may have violated the law by presiding over cases in which they had a financial interest, Rep. Chip Roy (TX-21), Rep. Darrell Issa (CA-50), and Rep. Deborah Ross (NC-02) joined Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) and Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) introduced the legislation in October.

The Courthouse Ethics and Transparency Act would require financial disclosure reports be made publicly available online, and require federal judges to submit periodic transaction reports of securities transactions in line with other federal officials under the STOCK Act. The Courthouse Ethics and Transparency Act would amend the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 to:

Require the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts to create a searchable online database of judicial financial disclosure forms and post those forms within 90 days of being filed, and;
Subject judges to the STOCK Act's requirement of filing periodic transaction reports within 45 days of securities transactions over $1,000.
The bill also preserves the existing ability of judges to request redactions of personal information on financial disclosure reports due to a security concern.

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