A second federal judge is facing a long-shot bid by a Republican lawmaker to have him impeached as conservative members of the US House of Representatives ramp up public criticism of judges who rule against US President Donald Trump's agenda.
Republican US Representative Andy Ogles of Tennessee on Monday said he filed a resolution seeking to have US District Judge John Bates in Washington DC, removed from office after he ordered the Trump administration to restore government health websites that were taken offline in response to an executive order requiring the removal of "gender ideology extremism."
Ogles' impeachment measure argued that Bates failed to consider that the webpages at issue maintained information about gender-affirming care and that the "continued socialization of this grave moral evil necessitates immediate action against those who would promote it".
Bates did not respond to a request for comment.
The US Constitution provides that the grounds for impeachment are treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.
To remove a judge from office, the House must pass articles of impeachment by a simple majority vote and then the Senate must vote by at least a two-thirds majority to convict the judge. Republicans control both chambers of Congress but do not have a two-thirds majority in the Senate.
But despite facing an unlikely path to success, a small group of House Republicans have in recent days have been ramping up calls to impeach judges who rule against Trump, formally moving to do so already with one other jurist, US District Judge Paul Engelmayer in Manhattan.
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The impeachment resolutions were filed against Engelmayer after he temporarily blocked the Department of Government Efficiency, the government cost-cutting team spearheaded by billionaire Elon Musk, from accessing US Treasury Department systems responsible for trillions of dollars in payments.
Musk on Monday threw his support behind impeaching Bates, writing on X: "Time to impeach judges who violate the law."
The attacks against judges for their rulings and calls for impeachment have been sharply criticized by bar groups and law professors, including John Collins of George Washington University, who said that the effort "smacks of intimidation."
"It's completely inappropriate," Collins said in an email.
The ruling Bates issued came in a lawsuit by the liberal-leaning medical advocacy group Doctors for America, which said the sudden removal of websites by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Food and Drug Administration hampered doctors' and researchers' ability to fight disease.
The webpages had been removed pursuant to an executive order Trump signed on his first day back in office on Jan 20 that directed the federal government to only recognize two, biologically distinct sexes, male and female.
The Feb 11 ruling requiring the pages to be restored incensed Trump's allies, including Musk, who described Bates as "corrupt" and "evil" and called for his removal.
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Ogles' resolution alleged Bates, an appointee of Republican former president George W. Bush, "has engaged in conduct so utterly lacking in intellectual honesty and basic integrity that he is guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors".
