Matthew Kacsmaryk at his confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill on Dec. 13, 2017. Kacsmaryk sparked a legal firestorm last year with a ruling suspending federal approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, that he owned from public view has now made that information public — writing that he owns at least $5 million in stock from the supermarket chain Publix, where his grandmother worked for more than 25 years.
According to federal ethics law, a report may be redacted “to prevent public disclosure of personal or sensitive information that could directly or indirectly endanger the filer or a filer’s family member if obtained by a member of the public hostile to the filer or a filer’s family member.”the Judicial Conference, declined to discuss the change in Kacsmaryk’s disclosure form, and the judge’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Public officials are not required to say how or from whom they inherited the stocks listed on their disclosure forms. But Kacsmaryk’s paternal grandmother, Mary Lacek Kacsmaryk, who joined Publix early in its history, worked for the Florida-based supermarket chain for more than 25 years,. The supermarket chain has an employee stock purchase plan in which associates can buy shares of Publix stock after one full year of employment, according to the company’s website.
Kacsmaryk told lawyers involved in the mifepristone case last spring that his chamber had received a “barrage of death threats” and harassing voice mails since the start of the case. A Florida woman was charged last year with calling his chambers in Amarillo, Tex., and threatening to murder him. Gabe Roth, executive director of the court transparency group Fix the Court, questioned whether the name of the supermarket chain could have been made public in earlier versions of Kacsmaryk’s reports. Roth notedties to Publix have been widely known and that it was important to list the stock publicly in the event that a case involving the supermarket chain came before Kacsmaryk.