More troubling allegations of conflict-of-interest have emerged about U.S. District Judge Timothy S. Black, the federal judge selected to hear a challenge to an Ohio pro-life law.
Not only did he once serve as president of Planned Parenthood's local chapter, he was also employed as its legal counsel.
As the abortion provider's lawyer, he recommended that pro-life sidewalk counselors be “fined substantially and often” to “help dissuade them.”
Judge Black, an Obama appointee, will hear Planned Parenthood Southwest Ohio Region v. Hodges, challenging a state law requiring abortionists to have admitting privileges at a nearby private hospital.
Planned Parenthood Southwest Ohio Region sued Ohio on Monday, arguing that the law would make Cincinnati abortion-free.
But Black once helped formulate the Cincinnati abortion facility's legal response to stanch protests outside its business.
In June 1986, he was involved in the case of seven pro-life advocates – five of whom spent the night in a Cincinnati jail – for violating then-Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Thomas Crush that no more than five people could protest outside the local Planned Parenthood office, the Margaret Sanger Center. Instead, 60 people showed up in a show of their first amendment rights.
Planned Parenthood asked Crush to fine each counselor $10,000 as a bond, which they would forfeit if they violated his orders again.
''I believe if the protesters are fined substantially and often, and those fines are collected, it will help dissuade them,'' Timothy Black, who is identified as “an attorney for Planned Parenthood,” told the Associated Press. ''Incarceration will make them martyrs. Fine after fine after fine makes it tougher for them.''
That makes his neutrality more than suspect, local right to life leaders say.
“An organization might seek a sympathetic judge to hear their case, but this is unethical,” said Paula Westwood, executive director of Right to Life of Greater Cincinnati. “Planned Parenthood's former attorney now serving as their judge discredits the judicial process.”
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This is the latest in a trickle of revelations about Black. In a 2010 questionnaire filed with the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Black revealed that he was director of the Planned Parenthood Association of Cincinnati for three years (1986-1989) and its president in 1988.
At the same time as his stint with Planned Parenthood, he served on the board of a group called “Pro-Kids Inc.,” a foster care advocacy group that seeks “to break the vicious cycle of child abuse and neglect.”
Yet his advocacy did not compel him to recuse himelf when pro-life issues came before the bench. In 2011, he allowed former Democratic Congressman Steve Driehaus to sue the Susan B. Anthony List for saying his vote for ObamaCare supported “taxpayer-funded abortion.” Black reversed himself in January 2013, tossing the lawsuit and saying that he “could not see the forest for the trees.”
Black also ordered the state of Ohio to recognize same-sex “marriages” contracted in other states in July 2013, a decision that was overruled by a panel of judges from the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals.
