Schumer Threatens Legislation if Texas Federal Court Won’t Discourage Judge-Shopping

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) threatened to push legislation to force a federal district court in Texas that has repeatedly ruled against the Biden administration to discourage alleged forum shopping by Republican plaintiffs.

Schumer and Democrats are angry that Texas-based Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump, has issued a series of rulings opposed by Democrats.

Based in the single-judge Amarillo Division of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Kacsmaryk infuriated pro-abortion activists when he issued a ruling on April 7 finding the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was wrong to approve the abortion drug mifepristone for public use in 2000.

In October 2022, Kacsmaryk struck down a federal guidance exempting LGBT employees from workplace policies on bathroom use, dress codes, locker rooms, and pronoun usage.

In December 2021, Kacsmaryk ruled against a federal COVID-19 vaccination mandate for health care workers.

In August 2021, Kacsmaryk ruled the Biden administration could not end the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” program that requires non-Mexican asylum-seekers arriving at the southern border to wait in Mexico for processing until the program was “lawfully rescinded.”

In an April 27 letter (pdf) to David Godbey, an appointee of former President George W. Bush who is chief judge for the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Schumer complained that plaintiffs in the state are effectively free to select the judge who will hear their case. Several challenges to Biden administration policies, some of which have been brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, have been filed in federal court in the Northern District of Texas.

Lawyers routinely try to obtain a favorable forum to hear their client’s cases but Democrats say Texas makes it unusually easy for conservative plaintiffs to seek out sympathetic judges like Kacsmaryk.

“Unsurprisingly, litigants have taken advantage of [the current system] to hand-pick individual district judges seen as particularly sympathetic to their claims,” Schumer wrote in the letter.

“The State of Texas itself is the most egregious example. It has sued the Biden Administration at least 29 times in Texas federal district courts, but it has not filed even one of those cases in Austin, where the Texas Attorney General’s office is located.”

“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,” Schumer wrote.

“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 wrote that Godbey should take action, or Congress will be forced to act.

“Currently, a federal statute allows each district court to decide for itself how to assign cases,” Schumer wrote.

“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.”

Attorney J. Christian Adams, president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF), suggested Schumer was being selective in his outrage.

“He wasn’t so concerned during the Trump years,” Adams told The Epoch Times by email.

“Not a word of criticism in early 2017 [when] open borders groups shopped for judges,” he said.