Reuters: Groups urge US Senate panel’s chair to conduct oversight of ‘judge shopping’
This excerpt is from a piece that originally ran on April 2, 2024.
A coalition of progressive advocacy groups and civil rights organizations on Tuesday urged the Democratic chair of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee to use his oversight power to address “judge shopping,” a tactic used by conservative litigants to bring lawsuits in courts where they are effectively guaranteed of having a sympathetic jurist hear their case.
In a letter to Senator Dick Durbin, 23 groups including Alliance for Justice, Demand Justice and Reproductive Freedom for All said it appeared that the judiciary’s top policymaking body had “watered down” a policy designed to curb judge shopping following Republican opposition.
The policy, announced by the U.S. Judicial Conference on March 12, would require a lawsuit challenging federal or state laws to be assigned a judge randomly throughout a federal district rather than stay in the specific, smaller division, or courthouse, where the case was initially filed.
If implemented, that policy would disrupt a tactic used by conservative litigants of filing cases in small divisions in Texas’ four federal districts whose one or two judges were appointed by Republican presidents and often rule in their favor on issues like abortion, immigration and gun control.