Dale Ho facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Dale Ho
Judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
Incumbent
Assumed office August 18, 2023
Appointed by	Joe Biden
Preceded by	Katherine B. Forrest
Personal details
Born	Dale Edwin Ho 1977 (age 47–48) San Jose, California, U.S.
Education	Princeton University (BA) Yale University (JD)

Dale Edwin Ho (born 1977) is an American lawyer who serves as a United States district judge. He works for the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Before becoming a judge, he led the American Civil Liberties Union's (ACLU) work on voting rights.

Early Life and Education

Dale Ho was born in 1977 in San Jose, California. His parents moved to the United States from the Philippines. He went to Princeton University and graduated in 1999 with a degree in political philosophy. He earned very high honors, known as summa cum laude, and was part of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. Later, he earned his law degree from Yale Law School in 2005.

Career Highlights

After law school, Dale Ho worked as a law clerk (an assistant) for two judges. He helped Judge Barbara S. Jones in New York from 2005 to 2006. Then, he assisted Judge Robert S. Smith at the New York Court of Appeals from 2006 to 2007.

From 2007 to 2009, he worked with the NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. (NAACP LDF). This group works to protect civil rights. From 2009 to 2013, he was a staff attorney there. He focused on projects related to legislative redistricting, which means making sure voting districts are drawn fairly. He also worked against gerrymandering, which is when districts are drawn to give one political group an unfair advantage.

In 2013, Ho became the Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Voting Rights Project. This project works to protect people's right to vote. He also taught law as a part-time professor. He taught election law at Brooklyn Law School starting in 2013. He also taught a class about racial justice at the New York University School of Law starting in 2014.

In 2019, Dale Ho was one of five ACLU lawyers featured in a documentary called The Fight. The film showed his work on a big case that went to the Supreme Court.

Important Cases

In 2018, Dale Ho was a main lawyer in a case called Fish v. Kobach. In this case, a court decided it was against the law to require people to show proof of citizenship to register to vote. Ho argued this case in a higher court, which agreed with the earlier decision.

Ho also argued two cases against the Trump administration in front of the Supreme Court of the United States.

• In Department of Commerce v. New York (2019), Ho represented groups that help people who have moved to the U.S. They successfully challenged a plan to add a citizenship question to the 2020 United States census.
• In Trump v. New York (2020), the ACLU challenged a plan to not count people who are not citizens when deciding how many representatives each state gets in Congress. The ACLU did not win this case.

Becoming a Federal Judge

When President Joe Biden started his term, Dale Ho was considered a possible choice for a federal judge position. President Biden wanted to choose judges from different backgrounds, not just corporate lawyers or prosecutors. On June 7, 2021, Senator Chuck Schumer suggested Ho for a federal judgeship in New York. On September 30, 2021, President Biden officially nominated Dale Ho to be a judge. He would take the place of Judge Katherine B. Forrest.

On December 1, 2021, a hearing was held for his nomination. This is where senators ask questions about the person who wants to be a judge. During this hearing, Ho apologized for some things he had said on social media in the past. He was questioned about a tweet where he seemed to call himself a "wild-eyed sort of leftist." He explained that he was talking about how others might see him, not how he saw himself. A video from 2018 also showed him saying that the U.S. Senate and the Electoral College were "undemocratic." He also argued that voting should be made easier and that people who have been convicted of crimes should still be able to vote.

Some groups supported his nomination, while others were against it. On January 20, 2022, the committee that reviews judge nominations had a tie vote, so his nomination did not move forward at that time. However, on June 14, 2023, the Senate voted to move his nomination forward. Later that same day, the Senate confirmed his nomination by a very close vote of 50 to 49. Dale Ho was only the second lawyer from the ACLU to become a federal judge directly. He officially became a judge on August 18, 2023.

Important Cases as a Judge

On September 25, 2024, Judge Ho was assigned to a case involving the New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

Personal Life

Dale Ho is a member of the First Unitarian Congregational Society of Brooklyn.

See also

• List of Asian American jurists