Federal judges who decided in May not to hire law clerks from Columbia University over the Israel-Gaza protests didn’t run afoul of judicial ethics, according to an appeals court panel.

A decision last week by the 5th Circuit Judicial Council upheld a prior finding in June that judges who decided not to hire Columbia graduates due to how the school handled the protests this year didn’t violate judicial ethics, according to multiple reports.

The decision comes after 13 federal judges in a letter to Columbia University President Minouche Shafik in May said that they won’t hire law clerks from the institution over its handling of the pro-Palestine protests that the judges said “threatened violence, committed assaults and destroyed property.”

The judges said they lost confidence in Columbia since it became “an incubator of bigotry,” noting that the late Justice William Brennan refused to hire Harvard Law School graduates as law clerks due to the faculty’s criticism of the Supreme Court.

The letter suggested that Columbia engages in viewpoint discrimination, saying the school wouldn’t have tolerated conservative pro-life demonstrators in the same manner as it tolerated pro-Palestinian protesters.

After weeks of demonstrations, Columbia officials canceled the school’s main commencement.

The New York Police Department entered the campus after days of unrest and arrested more than 100 protesters.

According to Law.com, the ethics complaint against the judges was brought by a prisoner who claimed it suggested the judges would be biased against dissenting views.

• Alex Swoyer can be reached at aswoyer@washingtontimes.com.