The Judicial Conference of the United States has strengthened the policy governing random case assignment, limiting the ability of litigants to effectively choose judges in certain cases by where they file a lawsuit.
[...]
“The random case-assignment policy deters judge-shopping and the assignment of cases based on the perceived merits or abilities of a particular judge. It promotes the impartiality of proceedings and bolsters public confidence in the federal Judiciary.”
[...]
Some plans assign cases to a judge in the division of the court where the case is filed. In divisions where only a single judge sits, these rules have made it possible for a litigant to pre-select that judge by filing in that division.
[...]
The amended policy applies to cases involving state or federal laws, rules, regulations, policies, or executive branch orders. District courts may continue to assign cases to a single-judge division when they do not seek to bar or mandate state or federal actions, whether by declaratory judgment and/or any form of injunctive relief.
[...]
The 26-member Judicial Conference is the policy-making body for the federal court system. By statute, the Chief Justice of the United States serves as its presiding officer and its members are the chief judges of the 13 courts of appeals, a district judge from each of the 12 geographic circuits, and the chief judge of the Court of International Trade.
US Courts
This crackdown on “judge shopping” is long overdue. It has also provoked a rather telling reaction from Republican Sens. Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn and Thom Tillis.
In a letter to the chief judges of all 94 federal district courts on Thursday, the senators urged those jurists to ignore the new policy — which they laid at the feet of Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer — because, in their view, these judges should ignore “partisan battles in Washington, D.C.”
[...]
[I]n some parts of the country, especially Texas, the result has been to allow a single judge to hear every case filed in a particular division.
[...]
For example, the nationwide challenge to the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone (one of two drugs used in the most common and safest abortion procedure) was filed in Amarillo, Texas — not a courthouse with any specific connection to mifepristone, but one in which it had a 100% chance of being assigned to a certain Trump-appointed district judge, former anti-abortion advocate Matthew Kacsmaryk. Kacsmaryk remarkably, if predictably, ruled against the FDA’s approval of the drug — an approval that occurred 23 years ago.
A nationwide challenge to Biden administration efforts to combat social media disinformation was filed in Monroe, Louisiana — where it had a 100% chance of being assigned to Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty. And the state of Texas, which has filed 37 different lawsuits in Texas district courts challenging Biden administration policies, has filed a majority of them in single-judge divisions — and none in Austin (where the Texas government is actually located) or Houston or Dallas or … you get the point.
[...]
Quietly, some courts changed their case assignment rules. And some judges in single-judge divisions, like Judge Jeff Brown in Galveston, changed their local rules to require litigants to provide some justification for why a lawsuit with no obvious geographic tie to that division was nevertheless filed there. But these reforms were scattershot. Bigger changes required intervention at a higher level.
MSNBC
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
No comments:
Post a Comment