The judge overseeing Mayor Eric Adams’ corruption case is a Biden-appointed newbie to the federal bench who previously worked for the ACLU and NAACP fighting for racial and voter justice.
Southern District of New York Judge Dale Ho, who is in his 40s, randomly landed the historic case Thursday by the spin of wooden wheel used to assign judges inside a Manhattan courtroom — a stroke of happenstance that thrusts him into the spotlight after barely a year on the bench.
“That will be a new experience for him on the bench — he hasn’t had years and years of high-profile cases — but I think he’ll just work very hard and try to do the right thing,” Shira Scheindlin, a former Southern District judge, told The Post on Friday.
“Of course, it’s very high-profile, he’ll be in the spotlight,” she said. “It’s a criminal charge of corruption, and I think one would expect him to be a fair and impartial judge.”
But while Ho may lack judicial experience, the longtime lefty lawyer arguably is no stranger to high-profile attention — or pushback for his activist stances.
After President Biden submitted Ho’s nomination to the Senate in 2021, the jurist waited nearly two years to be confirmed by a razor-thin, party-line 50-49 vote.
Republicans objected to Ho’s past statements — including once describing himself as a “wild-eyed sort of leftist” who is accused of “sometimes seeing racial discrimination everywhere I look,” The National Law Journal reported. They also looked askance at his comments calling the Electoral College and Senate “anti-democratic.”
“I very much regret the tone that I’ve taken on social media from time to time, particularly if it’s given anyone the impression that I wouldn’t be impartial,” Ho contritely told senators.
A Princeton University and Yale Law grad, Ho clerked in the Southern District of New York and New York’s Court of Appeals before serving as assistant counsel with the NAACP’s legal defense fund.
He became director of the American Civil Liberties Union Voting Rights Project in 2013 — a job that brought him Hollywood notoriety.
Ho’s battle against former President Donald Trump’s proposed citizenship on the US Census was featured in the Kerry Washington-produced documentary “The Fight,” which premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.
Self-admitted “overheated” rhetoric aside, Ho ultimately made it onto the Southern District’s bench in 2023.
Soon afterward, he recounted to a group of lawyers that US Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor — who served in the Southern District — said it takes as many as five years for new judges to stop feeling like they’re drowning, Bloomberg Law reported.
Ho has now been thrown in the judicial deep end, although his past racial justice work could arguably be a boon for Adams.
Adams has received the support of prominent black leaders such as the Rev. Al Sharpton and NAACP president Hazel Dukes, who have echoed Hizzoner’s laments that his prosecution smacks of a racial double standard.