Judiciary Drops Push to Curb Judge Shopping After GOP Backlash

Federal judicial officials have signaled they won’t move forward with an effort to curb judge-shopping, following blowback from Republicans who will soon control the White House and Congress, according to a member of Congress and another person familiar with the matter.

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said Wednesday in a hallway interview he had received “some pretty firm confirmations” from the Administrative Office of the US Courts that it doesn’t intend to move forward with a rule requiring trial courts to randomly assign certain cases. A second person familiar with the matter said they had also heard from the AO that no future action on random case assignment would be pursued.

An AO spokesperson declined to comment.

Roy said that individuals at the judiciary’s administrative office, through conversations and correspondence with him, “have made very clear that they do not intend to go down that road, they do not intend to use the rulemaking process.”

“And they certainly know it would be met with swift, immediate resistance from Congress,” Roy added.

Roy, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, threatened last month to vote against separate Senate-passed legislation (S. 4199) to add more trial court judges, unless the judiciary abandoned the judge-shopping effort. A binding rule mandating randomized case assignments would be “an egregious abuse of authority,” he wrote.

Roy said he hasn’t “gotten everything I want, in terms of a written statement that they will not do it.” But as a result of conversations he’s had since, Roy said he’s “inclined” to allow the bill to add judgeships to move forward, describing conversations as about “80% down the road in the right direction.”

The federal judiciary’s policy-making body, the Judicial Conference, announced in March that it had adopted a policy against judge shopping, a tactic litigants use to try and get cases before certain judges they view as favorable to their cause.

The guidance, which is nonbinding, was met with swift opposition from congressional Republicans, who saw the move as overreach.

The issue has been particularly prevalent in Texas, and especially its Northern District. US District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee and the sole district judge in the Amarillo courthouse, has seen his docket fill up with challenges filed by conservative litigants.

The Northern District court hasn’t changed its case assignment policies.

The conference’s advisory committee on civil rules has weighed crafting a binding rule. But during its most recent meeting in October, some judges on the panel expressed reservations about moving forward too quickly and questioned the judiciary’s authority to mandate a change under existing law.

Meanwhile, the bipartisan legislation to add judgeships for the first time in decades now faces opposition from House Democrats wary of giving President-elect Donald Trump more judges to appoint.

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), ranking member of the Judiciary Committee who previously co-sponsored the House bill, said Wednesday he now plans to vote against it. Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said he still wants to pass the bill and is hopeful it will get a floor vote “as soon as possible.”