Eleanor Ross shouldn’t be a federal judge. She exhibited disturbingly poor judgment, lied about it, and blamed her law clerk when she got caught. That’s not someone who should make life-and-death decisions about litigants’ lives, livelihoods, and liberty. The challenge is how to remove her, since federal judges enjoy life tenure during “good behavior” and can only be removed by congressional impeachment, unless they’re pressured by colleagues to step down to avoid further discipline.
Everyone seems to be waiting for someone else to act. Unfortunately, spineless members of Congress immediately hunkered down in their partisan camps. House and Senate Judiciary Democrats refuse to hold judges accountable for anything. They wrongly lionize the judiciary and view judges as a bulwark against autocracy, because judges sometimes rule against Trump administration lawlessness. Leadership — at least those leaders who even knew who Ross is — said the discipline Ross received was sufficient.
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On the other side of the aisle, two Georgia House Republicans, Clay Fuller and Andrew Clyde, filed articles of impeachment against Ross. Fuller’s rightly focused on egregious lack of candor, whereas Clyde’s focused on the salacious sexual misconduct. Unfortunately, both misstated the standard for impeachment: it’s not “high crimes and misdemeanors,” but “good behavior.” Ross is clearly no longer exhibiting good behavior. Neither litigants nor the public should have confidence in her ability to judge others’ veracity while her own veracity is in question, nor trust her rulings when she herself cannot tell the truth.
Back in September 2025, when first confronted with allegations against her, Ross lied to the court: denying the allegations and, disturbingly, blaming her law clerk, claiming he made up the allegations in retaliation for a poor performance review. Such an outrageous lie by a life-tenured federal judge should stop us in our tracks. Just two or three federal law clerks file complaints against judges each year, even though in 2023, the judiciary’s own workplace climate survey found as many as 106 judges harassed their clerks. We don’t have a culture of false allegations against judges: we have a culture of fear and gross underreporting, since clerks — and all judicial branch employees — are exempt from Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and lack legal protection against retaliation for reporting.
It took Ross several supplemental submissions before admitting she lied. And yet, her only “discipline” was that she was ordered to issue apology letters to six clerks who participated in the investigation. She couldn’t even get that right. In her first apology letter, she wrote:
Thank you for your contributions to our Court during your clerkship. I convey my deepest apology for not taking steps to ensure that it was a more positive experience. I wish you all the best in your future legal endeavors and in life.
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Sincerely,
Judge Ross
Four clerks expressed concern to Eleventh Circuit Chief Judge Pryor that the apology did not meet the standard — “sufficiently specific so as to make clear to the recipient the sexual misconduct for which the judge is apologizing.” So, Pryor invited Ross to correct her work (something no other workplace would do). In her second apology, Ross apologized to one clerk “for my false accusation against you.”
Ross’s “false accusation” is textbook retaliation for participating in an investigation and appears intended to obstruct the investigation into her misconduct, as well as chill complaints and clerks’ participation in future misconduct investigations. We shouldn’t just whistle past this false accusation’s enormous implications on the clerk’s career and reputation, had Ross not admitted she lied. As someone whose own career was derailed by a false negative reference the judge I clerked for submitted to my post-clerkship employer five years ago, I understand the enormous power disparity between a federal judge with nearly unchecked power to spread such falsehoods, and a vulnerable clerk.
Disturbingly, Ross admits to retaliating against this clerk, in writing, yet Pryor declined to identify a second complaint against her to investigate Ross’s efforts to obstruct the investigation through retaliation. Importantly, under the Judicial Conduct and Disability Act (JCDA), the law governing judicial discipline, Pryor could act absent a second complaint. He has chosen not to. Retaliation is prohibited conduct under Rule 4(a)(5) of the Rules for Judicial Conduct and Judicial Disability Proceedings. Sadly, Congress lacks judiciary experts with the expertise and motivating personal experience to champion this issue during an impeachment and galvanize support among their colleagues, let alone explain it to their constituents and the public.
Witnessing a judge retaliate against clerks and get away with it reinforces other clerks’ fears about coming forward: they worry they’ll be discounted, disbelieved, or retaliated against. Consider this: when a JCDA complaint is filed, a copy is transmitted to the subject judge, who immediately sees the complainant’s name and is not legally prohibited from retaliating against them by, for example, providing false negative references to employers, getting them blackballed from jobs, bad-mouthing them, and intervening in bar applications. Clerks depend on judges for references and career advancement. That’s why more than 100 abusive sitting federal judges have evaded accountability. The judiciary refuses to self-police: they know this Congress won’t conduct the rigorous, transparent oversight to force the judiciary’s decades-long fraud perpetrated upon the public into the spotlight to initiate reform.
Congressional Democrats should join Ross’s impeachment proceedings and signal a bipartisan commitment to holding judges accountable for abusing their power. But we can’t discount the politics at play: Republicans want to impeach and remove a Democratic appointee to replace her with a Trump appointee, whereas Democrats will protect their own and keep that judicial seat blue at all costs. But, as one Democrat conceded privately, Democrats protecting someone because she’s on their team is not a good enough reason. When the roles were reversed, and Trump appointee Joshua Kindred was referred by the Judicial Council to Congress for impeachment in 2024, not a single congressional Democrat filed articles of impeachment. So congressional Democrats’ assertions about accountability and transparency ring hollow.
If we wait for Congress to impeach Ross, we’ll be waiting forever. If we wait for the judiciary to police itself, we’ll be waiting forever. It’s on us to force change.
If you’re outraged judges have free rein to abuse their power — interpreting our laws while exempt from those same laws — call your congressperson and urge them to impeach Ross.
Law clerks have agency, too. Mistreated clerks should flood the zone with JCDA complaints. Let’s aim for 10 or 20 complaints, rather than the usual two or three, in 2026. Force the judiciary to expend resources investigating. This will prove their process is deeply flawed and, frankly, would be unworkable if anywhere close to the true number of mistreated employees filed complaints. They’ll either be incentivized to reform it, or publicly shamed in the press — literally the only thing motivating them — each time another judge’s misconduct is uncovered.
Federal judges interpret our laws. They should be held to the highest ethical standards. Right now, they’re literally held to none.
The Supreme Court’s ethical lapses are particularly salient in the public consciousness: many are rightly outraged by apparent ethical violations, conflicts of interest, and naked partisanship. Supreme Court reform, including a code of conduct, is a popular Democratic talking point. But lawmakers and candidates fail to understand the code of conduct for lower court federal judges — which applies to Ross — is unenforceable and unenforced. It relies on law clerks to blow the whistle, which they rarely do, since they’re not legally protected against retaliation; and on judges’ colleagues to self-police misconduct, which, if Pryor is any indication, they do not. We need real reforms, and real reformers; not hollow talking points advanced by people who don’t know what they’re talking about.
Solutions exist, if we had fighters and experts in Congress to champion them, and creative thinkers to advance creative solutions. Congress should finally pass the Judiciary Accountability Act (JAA), which would extend Title VII, including legal protection against retaliation, to over 30,000 exempt judicial branch employees, closing the legal loophole that currently affords judges immunity for harassing staff. Congress should also pass the Transparency and Responsibility in Upholding Standards in the Judiciary (TRUST) Act, which would have prevented abusive judges like Mark Wolf and Kesha Tanabe from resigning amid misconduct investigations to evade accountability altogether. Importantly, Congress should leverage the appropriations process and the judiciary’s annual budget request (which two Supreme Court justices are testifying about on the Hill this week) to hold the judiciary accountable for making changes, either by cutting the judiciary’s budget until they implement reforms or tying their funding to meaningful benchmarks for progress.
The House and Senate Judiciary Committees should finally conduct meaningful oversight over the judiciary, which they’ve refused to do, even though “Judiciary” is literally in those committees’ names. Disturbingly, since the Ross matter came to light in late May, House Judiciary Democrats had time to write to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts (AO) urging them to ban judges and clerks from participating in prediction markets, but could not be bothered to send an oversight letter about Ross, draft impeachment articles, join House Republicans’ impeachment efforts, or even learn who Eleanor Ross is. Ross affords a clear opportunity to seize the moment and use the national bully pulpit while there’s public attention and bipartisan interest.
Many are rightly demanding transparency and accountability for those in power. Yet members of Congress — on the news demanding transparency and accountability for Trump administration lawlessness — suffer from a blind spot surrounding the courts, repeatedly giving judges the benefit of the doubt, which they don’t deserve. Power corrupts: there’s nothing more dangerous than power without accountability. Congress has a rare opportunity, given the egregiousness of Ross’s misconduct, to finally fix both the immediate problem –Ross endangering public trust and confidence in the courts — and a larger system that’s been broken for generations. The longer Congress allows the judiciary’s lawlessness to go unchecked, the more emboldened abusive judges will become.
Aliza Shatzman is the President and Founder of The Legal Accountability Project, a nonprofit aimed at ensuring that law clerks have positive clerkship experiences, while extending support and resources to those who do not. She regularly writes and speaks about judicial accountability and clerkships. Reach out to her via email at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter @AlizaShatzman.