Republicans will no longer get to handpick their judges when they sue Biden

MicroWave@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 432 points – Republicans will no longer get to handpick their judges when they sue Biden
vox.com

The federal judiciary’s new rules target “judge shopping.” That’s terrible news for Matthew Kacsmaryk and other partisan judges.

Plaintiffs hoping to reshape federal or state policies will no longer be allowed to choose which judge will hear their case, at least in federal court. A new policy announced Tuesday by the Judicial Conference of the United States, a government body that sets policy for federal courts, targets rules in some federal courts that the conference said “risked creating an appearance of ‘judge shopping.’”

At least in the short term, this policy is a massive victory for the Biden administration — and, indeed, for anyone who believes that federal and state policies should not rise and fall based on one outlier judge’s partisan views.

Texas’s Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, for example, has been very aggressive in bringing lawsuits that challenge Biden administration policies before right-wing judges who have then issued sweeping, nationwide orders blocking those policies — sometimes on highly dubious grounds that are reversed, months later, by the Supreme Court.

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Well... the Fifth Circuit will continue to make terrible, unconstitutional rulings, but at least they won't get to pick and choose.

Almost seems like we need an actual candidate for president to stop this nonsense

Biden it is!

Biden ain't winning a rematch unfortunately. Dems need to go further left or risk losing yet again. At this point I'm convinced Biden is trying to lose.

I think you underestimate how milquetoast most ‘liberals’ in the US are…

Meaning you think Biden can win without a majority of the leftist vote?

I mean....yeah. It is why we are historically ignored by Dems.

God I hope you're right. Remember the "0% chance" the orange had in 2016? Biden is walking into a slaughter..

2016 was an outlier, not the new normal. What about 2020, when Biden defeated Trump? How many people will switch from Biden to Trump? Compare that with the Hailey voters who tell pollsters their prepared to do the opposite. How many people who turned 18 since 2020 are going to vote for Trump? Compare that to the number of Trump voters who died since 2020.

Trump won in 2016 by motivating people who never voted before to turn out. Compare that to the "excitement" and novelty of his current campaign.

The national and state Republican committees are under Trump control. But they're also broke. The big Republican pockets don't want to donate to a party that actively attacks and excludes them as "establishment" just so that their money can pay Trump's legal bills. There are real questions about how much of a campaign the RNC can run for Trump, much less down-ballot people.

Trump is historically weak. Optimism is rational.

All I'm saying is, have your passport ready for when the libs are surprise-pikachu-faced about the situation you're stuck with.

I feel like the media might actually be helping Bidens chances by broadcasting the very obvious bad things Trump plans on doing in office that he has said. Most Dems probably dont give a shit about Gaza so, while we have a problem with it, they dont.

Ehh, I don't know a soul under 30 who stands w/ Biden and the MIC.

Trump will be equally as bad, and plenty of Republicans are willing to go 3rd party (as they ALSO hate both Biden and Trump)

Eventually the dems will see that their refusal to move even a step left is fucking them, until then I blame them for the incoming wave of fascism.

Biden already won once without a majority of the leftist vote.

Y'all fuckers don't get out and vote, it's well known.

Just make sure you have your passport ready if you're not the correct type of person for the fuhrer's 2nd reign of terror :)

America never fails to surprise me, you get to choose judges for a case?? Is judiciary a joke? Lol

You're not supposed to be able to choose a judge like this, judges are supposed to be assigned at random our of the pool of trial judges in the district. But the problem is that some districts are subdivided further, to the point where the pool in the subdivided area consists of one judge, and you can guarantee a trial goes to that judge simply by finding someone to file who lives in the right zip code.

I don't know if it's still true, but there was a time that a lot of companies owned assets in East Texas because the judges (mainly T. John Ward) there were so friendly to patent trolls. A friend of mine did technical work for one of the law firms involved in TiVo vs. Dish. One company is headquartered in California, the other in Colorado. Where was the lawsuit? The Eastern District of Texas.

It's more of a loophole in certain jurisdictions. Judges are usually assigned randomly, but some districts have divisions with only one sitting judge.

The federal judiciary is divided into 94 different geographic districts, which normally encompass either all or part of a state. In many districts, newly filed cases are assigned randomly. So, for example, if a plaintiff files a lawsuit in a district with three Democratic appointees and three Republican appointees, they would have an equal chance of drawing a judge from either party (although some judges are partially retired and have a lighter caseload).

Some districts, however, have used different rules to assign cases — and one very notable example is the United States District Court of the Northern District of Texas. That district, like some others, is subdivided into multiple “divisions,” some of which only have one sitting judge. Any civil case filed in one of these Northern District of Texas divisions was automatically assigned to one judge: Kacsmaryk.

So this new rule will try to close that loophole.

Yes, 45s classified documents case is being handled by the legal equivilent of the three kids in a trench coat, that he appointed to the district his cases would be heard in. Between the mishandling of evidence, accidental release of the names of wittnesses and inability to stick to established protocol, im amazed they havent been thrown off the case or disbarred.

You're giving "Judge" Cannon way more benefit of the doubt than she deserves. Everything she's done has been calculated and deliberate to torpedo the case and help Trump.

There is no benefit of doubt from me, the problem is that the judicial system is hesitant to punish one of their own. Expecially when the most recent appointees are on-board with the malpractice. Hanlon's razor is how I normally try to view things and it is deeply concerning that it does not apply here.

And that's after she's already (clearly erroneously) ruled in Trump's favor in a previous case. It's absurd that they were able to get her again.

The issue is that the federal courts are divided into circuits, and each circuit handles cases from multiple states. So there’s not a single centralized federal court (except the SCOTUS, of course.) And the fifth circuit is basically balls to the wall crazy conservative. So if you can get your trial heard by the fifth circuit, it will land in front of a wildly conservative judge who won’t even try to maintain the image of impartiality.

The fifth circuit just so happens to take cases from Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. This means that the two extremely conservative states (Texas and Mississippi) have been able to leverage the court to challenge pretty much any left-leaning laws they want.

The fifth circuit courts can’t override the SCOTUS or go against any precedents set by higher courts. But if they’re hearing fresh arguments on new laws with no settled precedent, then they have first crack at setting the precedent. And if you’re in the fifth circuit, they will set an extremely conservative precedent. And that forces lower courts to follow them, unless it gets overruled by the SCOTUS.

So basically, let’s say you’re a conservative and Biden just enacted a law you don’t like. You sue in Texas, landing you in the fifth circuit. The fifth circuit rules in your favor. Then the SCOTUS refuses to take the appeal, (because they’re busy and this particular law isn’t worth their time,) meaning the fifth circuit precedent stands. Now the law is effectively nullified in the entire country, without even being ruled on by the SCOTUS.

There are other similar examples, but the fifth circuit is the most widely known. For instance, there’s a judge in east Texas who had historically been very friendly to patent trolls. So if you’re a patent troll with a bogus patent that never should have been granted, and you’re looking to sue a company for infringement, you’d sue in east Texas. Because any other court would throw your case out and nullify your patent. But that one particular judge is friendly, and he’s the only one in the area (because east Texas is extremely rural, and doesn’t have enough population to support more than one judge,) so you know you’ll get a friendly judge.

In the 1990s it was suing porn producers from LA in places like Oklahoma because the Supreme Court ruled that obscenity is decided by local standards. So asshole prosecutors changed the locale to get a win.