Texas Court Famous For Judicial Shopping Decides It Can Ignore Judicial Conference’s New Policy Against Judicial Shopping

Apparently, everything really is bigger in Texas, including the audacity of federal judges who think they’re above the rules. In a stunning display of hypocrisy, the Northern District of Texas has decided that new judicial shopping rules just don’t apply to them. Because that would make it harder to win culture war fights. But if you want to undermine what little respect is left for the judiciary, this is exactly how to do it. This is brazen partisanship, mixed with a belief that the rules just don’t apply when you don’t like them.

Just recently we wrote about the new policy that came down from the Judicial Conference, which is run by Chief Justice John Roberts. The policy states that when cases are filed in a courthouse, they should be randomly assigned to any judge in the district, rather than keeping the cases in that specific division courthouse.

The issue here first really came up in some patent cases. Some federal courthouses really only have one or sometimes two judges. So, plaintiffs were able to effectively guarantee cases would get before those judges. Soon after this became known in patent cases, a bunch of MAGA Trumpists realized they could use this to their advantage and focused on filing cases that brought up key culture war nonsense in the courts of Terry Doughty or Matthew Kacsmaryk, who would then issue batshit crazy rulings, often with broad injunctions.

All of this really harmed whatever respect was left for the judiciary, and John Roberts knew it. He had mentioned the problem two years ago and seemed to recognize the harm it did to respect for the judiciary. But it still took two more years for the Judicial Conference (which is Roberts and the Chief Judges of all the Appellate courts) to put out this policy note.

And almost immediately, Republicans freaked out. Two of the worst 5th Circuit Judges, James Ho and Edith Jones, whined about how unfair this was. A bunch of Republican senators sent an angry letter to courts telling them to ignore the new policy. Hilariously, Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn, and Thom Tillis were the senators who sent the letter. Tillis’ name stands out because in 2021 he was the senator who sent a letter to Roberts complaining about this practice and asking Roberts to fix it.

Here is from Tillis’ letter in 2021:

Our understanding is that in some judicial districts, plaintiffs are allowed to request their case be heard within a particular division. When the requested division has only one judge, this allows plaintiffs to effectively select the judge who will hear their case. We believe this creates an appearance of impropriety which damages the federal judiciary’s reputation for the fair and equal administration of the law. Worse still, such behavior by plaintiffs can lead individual judges to engage in inappropriate conduct intended to attract and retain certain types of cases and litigants.

And here’s the letter Tillis just sent to courts:

It’s not our place to opine on how you should best manage the caseload of your court… It is your job to manage the caseload of your court according to the dictates of local circumstances and convention….

So three years ago, it was a problem in which Tillis had to alert the Chief Justice and ask him to fix it because it was creating “an appearance of impropriety.” Now, when this tactic is regularly used for partisan culture war nonsense, Tillis suddenly says it’s not his place to opine?

I’m going to suggest that Senator Thom Tillis is full of shit.

As Joe Patrice at Above the Law noted, all these Republicans whining about it were very much a “hit dog hollers” kinda situation, as they know the system is being abused to their advantage, and they want to keep it that way, even when it exposes the hypocrisy of a senator like Thom Tillis. Hypocrisy is no longer a liability in politics.

Anyway, given all that, the Judicial Conference walked back its original policy decision and made it clear that the new policy was at each court’s “discretion.”

You know where this is heading next, don’t you?

The Northern District of Texas, where Matthew Kacsmaryk is one of 11 judges, but the only judge in the Amarillo division, has announced that it will not change how it distributes cases.

In his letter, Godbey, an appointee of Republican former President George W. Bush, said the judges in his district met on Wednesday. “The consensus was not to make any change to our case assignment process at this time,” he said.

So anyone wanting a pretty much automatic GOP-culture war win just needs to file cases in Amarillo, and you’ve got your man.

In theory, this issue could eventually be solved by Congress. This seems unlikely now that it’s turned into a stupid partisan political football (we see you Tillis). The Supreme Court could also eventually try to take some action. It has cracked down on jurisdiction shopping in the past. Even Justice Gorsuch seems pretty fed up with Kacsmaryk’s nonsense (he also made an offhand comment suggesting he was upset with Doughty in the Murthy case as well for issuing a broad injunction).

So, it’s possible the Supreme Court could step in and fix things, but that would likely be years away. Until then, the courts are signaling loud and clear: if you want a judge who will rule in a particularly partisan way, the 5th Circuit is happy for you to file those cases in Amarillo. Apparently, the “appearance of impropriety” is no matter when the courts can strip rights away and win stupid culture war fights.