A government-appointed panel has agreed to review and potentially create rules responding to concerns about attorneys cherrypicking courts that they believe will be more sympathetic to their cases.
The committee is composed of federal judges, lawyers, professors and others appointed by the chief justice of the Supreme Court. According to Reuters, the committee met on Tuesday and asked a pair of academics to issue a report in April regarding members’ authority in this area.
While several members reportedly downplayed the significance of “judge shopping” and authority for them to effect change, the committee’s chair, U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg, said the issue was “highly important” and that “people outside the judiciary are watching to see what, if anything, we do.”
Chief U.S. District Judge David Godbey, who oversees the Northern District of Texas and sits on the committee, argued there was “a local interest in having local disputes resolved by local judges.”
Legal Advocacy Groups Clash Over ‘Judge Shopping’
Tuesday’s meeting came after Democrats’ July letter requesting the committee provide recommendations to federal courts.
“Congress currently allows each district court to decide for itself how to assign cases,” read the letter, which was signed by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and 18 other Democrats.
“This gives courts the flexibility to address individual circumstances in their districts and among their judges,” it added. “But that flexibility is permitting litigants to hand-pick their preferred judges and effectively guarantees their preferred outcomes. Accordingly, the Judicial Conference should recommend rules to all district courts that would promote uniformity in the federal courts.”
The letter suggested that courts should randomly assign cases to judges rather than letting attorneys choose the forum. Randomization was also proposed by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School and a group of nine organizations, including NARAL Pro-Choice America, National Immigrant Justice Center, American Federation of Teachers, and others.
The latter’s letter argued that litigants “implicitly label as unfit for presiding many of the districts’ judges based upon the party of the presidents who appointed the judges.” It also questioned how “judge shopping” impacts public trust and accused the abortion pill plaintiffs of using a “shell organization,” which registered in Texas fewer than three months prior to the lawsuit.
“The organization’s registration provides a Tennessee address for its mailing address. Its registration and website identify no physical presence within Texas, let alone Amarillo,” the letter reads. “Instead, the organization ties itself to Amarillo by listing as its address the address of a law firm in Amarillo whose website makes no reference to the organization’s existence. The organization is plainly a tool of Tennessee-based activists who targeted a particular judge over 1,000 miles away.”
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) Sr. Counsel Erik Prince, who is representing the plaintiff organization, said in a statement provided to The Epoch Times: “ADF files lawsuits wherever our clients take us—from California to New York, and everywhere in between.”
“Our clients in the FDA litigation are the frontline doctors who treat women and girls harmed by chemical abortion drugs,” he added. “Congress has empowered the American public to sue the FDA wherever they reside and wherever they are injured. Our two lead plaintiffs reside in and around Amarillo, Texas.
“Our lead medical association, The Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, is incorporated in Texas, and its registered agent is in Amarillo. In addition, our lead medical doctor resides and works in the Amarillo area. The Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine was actively engaged in advocacy on critical medical issues well before we filed our lawsuit and has continued to do so since then.”
