Democratic U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Thursday urged the chief judge of a federal district court in Texas to implement a new judicial policy that would curtail the ability of conservative litigants to "judge shop" and steer cases challenging government policies to sympathetic jurists.
Schumer in a letter to Chief U.S. District Judge David Godbey of the Northern District of Texas asked him to put a policy the U.S. Judicial Conference adopted last week that aims to ensure that cases challenging federal and state laws are randomly assigned judges into effect "as soon as possible."
That policy would require lawsuits challenging federal or state laws to be assigned a judge randomly throughout a federal district rather than stay in the specific, smaller division, or courthouse, where the cases were initially filed.
Republican state attorneys general and activists had seized on local rules in Texas to sue in small courthouses whose one or two judges were appointed by Republican presidents, enabling them to essentially choose judges who have often ruled in their favor on issues like abortion, immigration and gun control.
The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on Tuesday in one such case, in which U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk - an appointee of Republican former President Donald Trump - in the single-judge division of Amarillo, Texas, suspended approval of the abortion pill mifepristone.
The Supreme Court has allowed the pill to remain on the market while it considers the appeal. Kacsmaryk's division is one of seven that comprise the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, which has 11 active judges.
But following blowback from Senate Republicans and some conservative judges, judicial policymakers on Friday made clear in guidance issued to judges nationally that the policy was discretionary, leaving it to each district court to decide how to implement it.
Schumer, who along with other Democrats had urged the judiciary to curtail such "judge shopping," in remarks delivered on the Senate floor on Thursday said the practice had become "rampant" in Texas' Northern District and should be addressed through the new reform.
That district also encompasses Fort Worth, which has just two active Republican-appointed judges including U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor, whose past rulings include one declaring the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional. He was later reversed.
The judge, an appointee of Republican former President George W. Bush, cited the geographically large size of his district -- more than 96,000 square miles; the burden for court personnel to travel between courts; and "the desire of communities to have local judges."
Schumer in his letter, though, noted that the neighboring, similarly-sized U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas had in 2022 adopted a district-wide random assignment policy for patent cases in response to similar judge-shopping concerns.
He requested that Godbey by April 4 provide information on how many civil cases were filed in 2023 seeking to block state or federal laws; how the district goes about deciding the method of assigning cases; and information on when it would adopt the Judicial Conference's new policy.
Godbey did not respond to a request for comment.
"It is our expectation that this is the last we hear about this issue from the Judicial Conference," they wrote.
Read more:
US Senate Republicans push back against anti 'judge shopping' policy
Conservative US judges criticize new rule curbing 'judge shopping'
US federal judiciary moves to curtail 'judge shopping' tactic
