Comment on this story
comment
correction
A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that a lawsuit challenging portions of the Affordable Care Act was filed in a single judge panel. It was filed in a Fort Worth courthouse with three judges. The judge presiding over the case is also assigned to a courthouse where he is the sole judge. The article has been corrected.
A federal judge has denied a Justice Department request to reschedule a high-profile investment-related lawsuit against the Biden administration, dismissing the government’s claim that plaintiffs improperly filed in a district that would guarantee a conservative judge who agrees with her case.
U.S. Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s decision marks the second defeat in the Justice Department’s efforts to combat what some legal experts are calling a growing problem of judge or forum shopping — a strategy in which plaintiffs deliberately fall into one-judge Submit departments and bypass the random assignment of judges that is a tenet of the American legal system.
A third case that the Justice Department sought to transfer from another chamber of single judges in Texas is pending.
Kacsmaryk, whose courthouse is in Amarillo, Texas, ruled that he would continue to preside over a case challenging a Labor Department policy that allows pension plan managers to consider climate change and other social issues in their investment decisions.
The Justice Department had said the lawsuit by the Republican Attorneys General of Texas and other states should be filed in Austin — the Texas capital — or in DC for their investment decisions.
“Presumably the defendants are not asking this court to effectively bar the plaintiffs from ever filing again in the Amarillo Division,” Kacsmaryk wrote in a sharply worded, sometimes scathing decision. “But when is your next case in Amarillo Division supposed to survive a transfer request? The defendants do not explain it.”
The Justice Department’s fight against judge buying in Texas
Kacsmaryk, a Trump-appointed president, is leading several cases with potentially significant national ramifications. Most closely watched is a lawsuit challenging the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone, a key abortion drug.
Oral arguments in the case, brought by a conservative legal group on behalf of anti-abortion medical organizations and four doctors, took place on March 15; Kacsmaryk could rule at any time.
The pension plan lawsuit was filed by Republican attorneys general from Texas, Utah and other states. An Amarillo-based business owner was added as a plaintiff after the Justice Department accused attorneys general of judge shopping, public filings prosecuting the case show.
In its request for a change of venue, the Justice Department argued that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) had repeatedly filed lawsuits against the Biden administration in small Texas courthouses with only one federal judge.
Paxton’s office has sued the Biden administration 28 times in Texas courts, according to a Justice Department brief. Eighteen of those cases were filed in single-judge divisions, the division said.
Government lawyers appeared cautious about their request to move the pension plan lawsuit, trying to reassure Kacsmaryk that they believed he would be impartial but were nonetheless seeking a district with a more relevant connection to the case. Even the perception of judge buying, the federal government argued, could undermine public confidence in the judicial system.
In response, the attorney general said Amarillo was an “appropriate place” and Biden policy would impact residents across the country, including in Amarillo.
Kacsmaryk firmly sided with the conservative states. He said the government had failed to meet the high standards warranted for the suit to be transferred and that the attorney general had not broken any rules by filing at his courthouse.
The Texas judge who could reject the abortion pill
The judge also appeared to take a sharp swipe in his ruling against University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck, who has criticized judge-shopping in Texas in newspaper op-eds and on social media. The Justice Department cited Vladeck’s research and social media posts in its motion to transfer the case.
After Kacsmaryk stated that none of the factors cited by the Justice Department “support a transfer,” Kacsmaryk added: “The defendants cannot establish good reason by arguing that the transfer is justified under an unenumerated ninth factor: an amicus.” -Briefing submitted by a professor with a Twitter account.”
The Justice Department also lost its motion to transfer a lawsuit challenging the Biden administration’s new immigration service parole program — which would grant up to 360,000 people a year from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela legal two-year entry — from a single judge in the Texas division in another division. U.S. District Judge Drew B. Tipton, a candidate for President Donald Trump who struck down another Biden immigration proposal in 2021, is leading the new lawsuit, denying the transfer request earlier this month.
The third reassignment request — which is still pending — is a lawsuit filed by Paxton and other attorney generals questioning whether Congress followed voting protocols in passing a $1.7 trillion spending bill.