407 gifts valued at $935,000, with some presenting conflicts requiring recusal: see the list here

We’d like to be the first to welcome Chelsea Handler, Gordon Sondland, Mayor Mike and Jersey Mike to the FDRs

Fix the Court has long held that given federal judges’ positions of trust, they should not accept gifts, and they should pay for their own vacations and tickets to sporting events and fundraisers. The vast majority seem to agree with this assessment.

But during 2023-2024, the two most recent years for which the bulk of the disclosures are publicly available, 158 judges reported accepting 407 gifts valued at $934,947 in total, which included private plane flights, boating trips, free condo stays and even cash.

Though the tally represents just over six percent of the judiciary — and is more like 151 judges and 362 gifts valued at $874,272, since 45 gifts were either commonly available items or mislabeled reimbursements — it’s not difficult to see from the examples below how any gift acceptance exposes judges to unnecessary conflicts and justified criticism at a time when the branch can ill afford either. (See the list here; of note, a judge often included several gifts — i.e., food, transportation and lodging count as three — on a single line.)

The famous faces:
Some judicial gifts came from well-known figures. In 2023, D. Oregon Judge Karin Immergut accepted an $80,000 “one-week boat trip” from former U.S. Ambassador to the E.U., and first Trump impeachment witness, Gordon Sondland; Immergut’s husband was Sondland’s attorney during his moment in the sun. Also that year, E.D. New York Judge Joan Azrack accepted a private plane flight (valued at $600, per the Judicial Conference’s low-ball rule) and a Miami Dolphins ticket ($625) from Jersey Mike’s, whose founder, Peter Cancro, has ties to the Azrack family.

In 2024, S.D. New York Judge Loretta Preska accepted travel to Colorado from Michael Bloomberg ($1,500). She ruled in favor of his company three times over the years, though not since 2013, and it appears they have since become friends, as she’s recused in a more recent Bloomberg case. Also in 2024, S.D. Ohio Judge Timothy Black accepted a weeklong stay, valued at $35,000, at comedian Chelsea Handler’s “Mallorca residence”; Black’s son-in-law, Jon Favreau, was a guest on Handler’s show and co-hosts her favorite podcast.

The obvious conflicts:
Two judges received gifts from individuals who had a case before them at the time of receipt. C.D. California Judge Fernando Aenlle-Rocha accepted a ticket to a 2023 gala from a law firm while that firm was representing a party in one of his open cases. D. Alaska Chief Judge Sharon Gleason accepted a gift from her son-in-law’s employer, Hilcorp, while the company was fighting in her courtroom to expand its natural gas operations. (Gleason initially ruled against Hilcorp and later got the parties to compromise.) That some judges put gift-givers on their recusal lists (two examples: p. 3 and p. 8) suggests that these two should have done the same.

The less obvious conflicts:
Five judges received gifts from individuals who had business before them within six years of the gift-giving. In addition to leading the charge on the judiciary gift ban, Fix the Court has been instrumental in ensuring “cooling-off periods” are included in legislative proposals on judicial ethics; we like six years, as that aligns with the disclosure law’s retention clause, 5 U.S.C. §13107(d)(2)(B).

Eleventh Circuit Judge Jill Pryor cast a vote in an en banc petition in 2021, and in 2023 and 2024, she accepted a vacation rental from an attorney that represented one of the parties in that very case. In 2023, now-retired N.D. Georgia Judge Timothy Batten, Sr., accepted a gift from a former law partner who had three cases in Batten’s courtroom in the years prior, though when the one that had closed in 2020 was reopened in 2025, Batten recused.

Ninth Circuit Judge Consuelo Callahan accepted L.A. Chargers tickets four years after voting in an en banc involving the team. M.D. Florida Judge Patricia Barksdale accepted Fulham F.C. tickets three years after dismissing a case against the Jacksonville Jaguars (Shad Khan owns both teams). And D. Hawaii Judge Leslie Kobayashi accepted a ticket to a Hawaii Law fundraiser from law firm Nakashima Ching, which had several cases before her during the 2020s, though not during 2024, the year of the fundraiser.

We need more information:
Nine of the gifts lack the information needed to perform a thorough conflict check. Four of them look suspicious because the source was redacted or omitted: E.D. California Judge Barbara McAuliffe’s 2023 receipt of jewelry and a jacket; Second Circuit Judge Sarah Merriam’s 2023 receipt of jewelry; Fifth Circuit Judge Jacques Wiener, Jr.’s 2023 receipt of hunting and fishing excursions; and D. Alaska Bankruptcy Chief Judge Gary Spraker’s 2024 receipt of $5,000 in cash.

Three gifts were from former law clerks who quite possibly have business before their old bosses: E.D. Arkansas Judge Denzil Marshall, Jr., received a robe; Ninth Circuit Judge Jay Bybee received a wig; and E.D. Texas Judge Rodney Gilstrap received a framed “Dewey Defeats Truman” newspaper. Two of the nine came from individuals with common names, and we had yet to locate the right ones by press time.

Cash and other gifts of note:
Three gifts were cash, which is a bad look no matter how you slice it: Judge Batten reported receiving $24,000 from Medicraft Enterprises in 2023 (and $88,000 in total from 2021-2025 from the company); W.D. Missouri Bankruptcy Judge Cynthia Norton reported receiving $3,000 in 2024 from the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges; and as mentioned above, Chief Judge Spraker received $5,000 from a redacted source in 2024.

Other gifts of note include the seven times a judge (Arcara, three times; Christensen, twice; Kirsch and Azrack, once each) reported a flight via private plane and the five times a judge (Kobayashi, Scanlon, Mollway, Bredar, Aenlle-Rocha) accepted a free ticket to a fundraiser. In each case, the judge could have paid for the gift themselves or at least reimbursed the cost.

One of the most prolific gift recipients over the years, N.D. Alabama Judge Scott Coogler, retired last year, and we’re almost sad given his penchant for interesting gifts. His 2023 didn’t disappoint, as he reported receiving two “elderly horses” from a retired judge.

Supreme Court ties:
Since there’s always a SCOTUS angle to Fix the Court’s work — plus we’re tallying the justices’ recent gifts as we speak — it’s worth mentioning the Jefferson Medal that Chief Justice Roberts was awarded earlier this week and that Fourth Circuit Judge Roger Gregory won in 2024. Gregory didn’t include the physical medal on his disclosure, which we think means its value is less than $480 gift-reporting threshold. (We’ve asked the Jefferson Foundation.)

But Gregory did include the $10,000 honorarium the award comes with on his FDR. We believe that, per Judicial Conference rules, he should have donated it, as 2020 recipient Justice Sotomayor did. We’ve reached out to the Fourth Circuit to check.

Methodology:
We downloaded every disclosure from 2023 and 2024 available in the judiciary’s online database and searched the gift and additional information sections. According to data on federal court websites, 2,336 judges were serving in 2023, with 2,214 disclosures (95%) in the database as of last week, and in 2024, 2,369 judges were serving, with 2,005 disclosures (85%) in the database.

The due date for which all the prior year’s disclosures must be posted under federal law — minus the 5-10% of judges who ask for redactions and extensions, which should all be cleared up by now — is Aug. 13. Given that the judiciary adds and subtracts (!) disclosures to the database at unpredictable times, we’ll aim to update our list as more are posted.

A final note on partisanship:
Gift acceptance knows no partisan bounds. Of the 107 judges who accepted gifts and were presidentially appointed, 63 (59%) were appointed by Democratic presidents and 44 (41%) were appointed by Republican presidents. In addition, 26 acceptors are magistrate judges and 18 are bankruptcy judges. We did not account for active or senior status in our tally and included judges who have since retired.