Donald Trump believes that Judge Gonzalo Curiel's Mexican heritage creates an "inherent conflict of interest" in presiding over the Trump University case now pending in San Diego. According to the Wall Street Journal,
Mr. Trump said U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel had "an absolute conflict" in presiding over the litigation given that he was "of Mexican heritage" and a member of a Latino lawyers’ association. Mr. Trump said the background of the judge, who was born in Indiana to Mexican immigrants, was relevant because of his campaign stance against illegal immigration and his pledge to seal the southern U.S. border. "I’m building a wall. It’s an inherent conflict of interest," Mr. Trump said.
Trump's view of judicial disqualification has been rightly rejected by virtually every court to consider it since at least 1974, when Judge A. Leon Higginbotham (then on the district court in Philadelphia) encountered a recusal motion in a civil rights case. Judge Higginbotham's measured words have provided wise guidance to United States judges ever since, and they are well worth remembering now.
BEING BLACK, AND THE APPEARANCE OF IMPARTIALITY
When stripped to its essence, the gravamen of defendants' objection seems primarily based on the following express or implicit allegations:
(2) Some of the defendant union's members are white;
(3) The instant case involves a claim of racial discrimination;
(4) ‘By agreeing to appear before such group (The Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History) Judge Higginbotham presented himself as a leader in the future course of the black civil rights movement,' and
(5) By my appearance at the Association's meeting and/or by the substance of the remarks I actually made or as they were quoted in the newspaper, ‘the continuation of ‘Judge Higginbotham as finder of fact, molder of remedy, and arbiter of all issues constitutes judicial impropriety.'
I concede that I am black. I do not apologize for that obvious fact. I take rational pride in my heritage, just as most other ethnics take pride in theirs. However, that one is black does not mean, ipso facto, that he is anti-white; no more than being Jewish implies being anti-Catholic, or being Catholic implies being anti-Protestant. As do most blacks, I believe that the corridors of history in this country have been lined with countless instances of racial injustice. This is evident by the plain historical fact that for more than two and a half centuries, millions of blacks were slaves under the rule and sanction of law— a fate which confronted no other major minority in this country. Every presidential commission and almost every Supreme Court opinion dealing with racial matters have noted the fact that in this country, there has often been racial injustice for blacks.
Thus a threshold question which might be inferred from defendants' petition is: Since blacks (like most other thoughtful Americans) are aware of the ‘sordid chapter in American history of racial injustice, shouldn't black judges be disqualified per se from adjudicating cases involving claims of racial discrimination? Defendants do not go so far as to precisely assert that black judges should per se be disqualified from hearing cases which involve racial issues, but, as will be demonstrated hereinafter, the absolute consequence and thrust of their rationale would amount to, in practice, a double standard within the federal judiciary. By that standard, white judges will be permitted to keep the latitude they have enjoyed for centuries in discussing matters of intellectual substance, even issues of human rights and, because they are white, still be permitted to later decide specific factual situations involving the principles of human rights which they have discussed previously in a generalized fashion. But for black judges, defendants insist on a far more rigid standard, which would preclude black judges from ever discussing race relations even in the generalized fashion that other justices and judges have discussed issues of human rights. Under defendants' standards, if a black judge discusses race relations, he should thereafter be precluded from adjudicating matters, involving specific claims of racial discrimination.
To suggest that black judges should be so disqualified would be analogous to suggesting that the slave masters were right when, during tragic hours for this nation, they argued that only they, but not the slaves, could evaluate the harshness or justness of the system.
There is much more to the opinion in Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. Local Union 542, International Union of Operating Engineers, 388 F.Supp. 155, but I think no more needs to be said.
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