DALLAS - Sen. Charles Schumer is “urging” the chief judge for Texas’ Northern District to “reform the method” of how cases are assigned to judges in the federal district.
Yesterday, Schumer sent a letter to the Judge David Godbey, advising the chief judge that “Congress will consider more prescriptive requirements” if litigants are allowed to continue to “hand-pick their preferred judges” in the Northern District.
The state of Texas has filed more than two dozen lawsuits against the Biden Administration, several of which have ended up in the Northern District’s Amarillo Division, where those cases are assigned to Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk – the only judge for the Amarillo Division.
Just earlier this month, Judge Kacsmaryk denied the Depart of Labor’s motion to transfer an “ESG Rule” lawsuit brought by more than two dozen attorneys general out of the Amarillo Division.
The DOL argued that the case belongs in D.C. or a venue where the plaintiffs are located. Texas, a plaintiff in the case, argued that Texas resides in every place within its borders.
In his letter, Schumer writes that as a result of Judge Godbey’s assignment orders, plaintiffs in the Northern District “can now effectively choose the judge who will hear their cases.”
“Unsurprisingly, litigants have taken advantage of these orders to hand-pick individual district judges seen as particularly sympathetic to their claims,” the letter states. “The State of Texas itself is the most egregious example… Texas has always sued in divisions where case-assignment procedures ensure that a particular preferred judge or one of a handful of preferred judges will hear the case.
“That includes the Northern District’s Amarillo Division, where Texas has filed seven of its cases against the federal government. Many other litigants have done the same, including the Alliance Defending Freedom in its case challenging the FDA’s approval of mifepristone.”
Schumer writes that nothing requires the Northern District, which has seven divisions, to let plaintiffs hand-pick their judges. He compares the district to New York’s Northern District, which "assigns all of its judges to all of its divisions and randomly divides all cases between all of them, regardless of where the cases are filed."
The Senate majority leader also cites Texas’ Western District as an example, which “changed its case-assignment rules for patent cases filed in Waco—apparently in response to forum-shopping concerns—so that such cases are now randomly assigned between all eleven active judges in the district and one senior judge.”
The Waco Division also only has one judge, Judge Alan Albright, and has been the top venue for patent filings in recent years.
“The Northern District of Texas could, and should, adopt a similar rule for all civil cases,” the letter states. “Currently, a federal statute allows each district court to decide for itself how to assign cases. This gives courts the flexibility to address individual circumstances in their districts and among their judges.
“But if that flexibility continues to allow litigants to hand-pick their preferred judges and effectively guarantee their preferred outcomes, Congress will consider more prescriptive requirements.”