Judge Loren AliKhan is yet to recuse herself from the case, demonstrating ‘an abysmal lack of judgment,’ law professor says
George Washington University hired the federal judge who is presiding over a lawsuit accusing the school of “pervasive and severe antisemitic harassment” to teach a GW Law course on “ethics and discretionary judgment,” social media posts and course materials reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon show. That judge, Biden appointee Loren AliKhan, has yet to recuse herself from the case, prompting criticism from legal experts.
GW Law School’s Field Placement Program announced on February 25 that it hired AliKhan, who sits on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, to teach a corequisite course on “judicial lawyering.” Topics covered in the class include “protocol, professionalism, judicial decision-making,” “an attorney’s ethical duties and discretionary judgment,” and “the attorney’s role in creating a legal system that should provide equal access and eliminate bias, discrimination, and racism in the law,” according to a course bulletin, which says the class is part of the Spring 2026 semester. That semester started on January 12, suggesting AliKhan was hired before the school’s announcement.
AliKhan—whom then-president Joe Biden nominated to the court in May 2023, noting that she would be “the first South Asian woman to serve on United States District Court for the District of Columbia”—needed a tie-breaking vote from then-vice president Kamala Harris to secure Senate confirmation in December 2023. She has not recused herself from the antisemitism lawsuit against her new employer. In fact, it wasn’t until weeks after the job announcement that AliKhan acknowledged a potential conflict of interest when she issued a 10-day stay on March 30 “to assess whether she has a conflict that warrants her disqualification, disclosure to the parties, or other appropriate action.” She later scheduled a “status conference” for April 20.
Law professors told the Free Beacon that the delay is unnecessary—because federal law and other rules make clear that AliKhan should have recused herself immediately.
Keith Fisher, an associate professor at St. Thomas University College of Law who wrote legal briefs on behalf of the American Bar Association for a Supreme Court case involving a judge’s refusal to recuse, said AliKhan’s decision not to promptly “disqualify herself” shows “an abysmal lack of judgment.”
“This is such an easy decision. You should not even allow a scintilla of suspicion that you might not be impartial,” he told the Free Beacon. “The minute she decided to accept this position with GW, she should have just disqualified herself and short circuited this whole thing.”
Fisher said AliKhan “falls within the literal language” of an official code of conduct for federal judges. The code calls on judges to disqualify themselves if their “impartiality might reasonably be questioned” when they have a “financial interest in the subject matter in controversy or in a party to the proceeding, or any other interest that could be affected substantially by the outcome of the proceeding.”
Seth Oranburg, a law professor at the University of New Hampshire’s Franklin Pierce School of Law, agreed with Fisher’s assessment.
“A judge cannot pause a conflict of interest: judges on a litigant’s payroll should recuse themselves promptly. Judge AliKhan’s decision to ‘stay’ the Soffer v. GWU case to ‘assess’ her clear conflict of interest unfairly harms the plaintiff by delaying the inevitable. The only ethical solution is her complete recusal,” he told the Free Beacon.
Neither AliKhan nor GW responded to requests for comment.
The antisemitism lawsuit AliKhan is overseeing alleges that GW violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by allowing a “hostile educational environment” to flourish unchecked. It includes a litany of incidents against Jewish students, including physical assaults, vandalism, and verbal harassment, with university administrators allegedly turning a blind eye.
Sabrina Soffer, one of the plaintiffs who graduated last spring, told the Free Beacon that she and her legal team were unaware of AliKhan’s new employment until the judge stayed the case.
“This presents concerning circumstances, and there should be nothing that undermines the importance of this case. My hope is that what led to this appointment is transparent, and that this case is treated fairly,” Soffer said.
Soffer’s attorney, Jason Torchinsky, a former official in the Justice Department’s civil rights division, lamented that GW’s decision to hire AliKhan likely “delays justice.”
“We think the judge is required to recuse herself given her apparent employment by GW’s law school. Our clients are quite upset that this happened, and the likely need to have the case go to another judge delays justice and the necessary reckoning with antisemitism issues on GW’s campus,” Torchinsky told the Free Beacon.
During her Senate confirmation hearing, AliKhan faced criticism over arguments she presented while serving as the solicitor general of the District of Columbia, particularly surrounding religious liberty. In one instance, she argued that religious services posed a “greater risk” for COVID-19 infection than people gathered at anti-police protests but presented no evidence, prompting rebuke from Republicans.
Since the beginning of the second Trump administration, AliKhan has issued a series of rulings that have halted or constrained executive actions, including blocking a federal funding freeze, enjoining executive orders targeting law firms, which she called an “abuse of power,” and limiting the administration’s efforts to remove officials from the Federal Trade Commission by ordering their reinstatement.
AliKhan is also a longtime member of the American Constitution Society (ACS), a left-wing legal group that supports interpreting the Constitution “against the backdrop of history and lived experience” and promotes legal issues important to Democrats, such as ballot access and campaign finance reform. She served as the president of Georgetown University’s chapter of the ACS while she attended law school there and has consistently spoken at ACS events dating back to 2018.
Read the full article here
