Schumer Asks US Court in Texas to Change Assignment Practices

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote to a US trial court chief judge asking that the Northern District of Texas change how it assigns cases to prevent judge shopping.

“Even though the Northern District has twelve active judges and another four senior judges who still hear cases, your orders provide that civil cases filed in many divisions are always assigned to a single judge, or to one of just a few,” Schumer wrote in his letter Thursday to Chief Judge David Godbey.

The Northern District of Texas has become a target of Democratic criticism for assignment practices that all but guarantee civil cases filed in the Amarillo division land with Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk and those filed in the Wichita Falls Division to wind up with Judge Reed O’Connor.

“Unsurprisingly, litigants have taken advantage of these orders to hand-pick individual district judges seen as particularly sympathetic to their claims,” Schumer wrote.

The district has become a magnet for conservative litigants challenging Biden administration policies and rules, including the US Food and Drug Administration’s decades-old approval of a key abortion drug that Kacsmaryk ordered off the market earlier this month. That order is now on hold pending arguments before the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

Last month, O’Connor blocked an Obamacare requirement for health plans to pay in full for certain preventive health-care services, including PrEP drugs for HIV.

Schumer noted that a federal statute allows each district court to decide how to assign cases.

“This gives courts the flexibility to address individual circumstances in their districts and among their judges,” Schumer said. “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.”