Editorial: Federal Judges Need To Deep Six Maui Trip

Perhaps judges in the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals have been sequestered for months. That’s the only way to explain the completely tone-deaf reaction to Senate requests to scale back or cancel their 2012 conference — make that junket — next month in Maui.

Because anyone who has not been sequestered would have heard about the April resignation and firings at the General Services Administration over an $823,000 training conference for 300 West Coast employees in Las Vegas. It featured $30,000 worth of jumbo shrimp, a $75,000 “team building exercise” that had employees building a bicycle, and a mind reader. And it has become the poster child for federal government excess and waste at taxpayer expense.

So how does a trip for 150 of the circuit’s district and appellate judges from eight Western states — plus an equal number of employees and government lawyers — to an island paradise sound more responsible than, say, flying Hawaii’s five judges to the mainland?

It doesn’t. The Maui sport fishing, golf, yoga, surfing lessons, tennis, Zumba, luau and hula dancing almost make that GSA Vegas vacation look like work.

After senators questioned the 9th Circuit, it agreed to postpone its 2013 conference in California to 2014. That is virtually meaningless, considering more than half of the circuit’s judges are already in California (Arizona, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Montana and Washington make up the rest of the district). Organizers should take note of one of the planned Maui seminars and adjust their August plans before the courts end up as tarnished as the GSA.

It’s called “How Not To Get Your Habeas Handed To You.”

This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.