Originally Published: April 11, 2024 2:02 p.m.

Just a few weeks ago, it seemed that the energy around addressing the increasingly common practice of plaintiffs handpicking their judges had unexpectedly flared, and more expectedly died down.

In a shock to experts who have been harping on the issue to anyone who would listen for years, the Judicial Conference — the staid policy-making body for the federal courts — announced in March a new policy to randomize case assignments for certain kinds of lawsuits. This would stop right-wing litigants from judge-shopping their way into a single-judge division where they could ask for a national injunction — securing themselves a friendly judge who'd more likely than not block whatever Biden administration policy they didn't like for the whole country. 

But hope that this new policy would end the practice was short-lived. The chief judge for the Northern District of Texas, one of the most popular destinations for judge-shoppers thanks to Trump appointee and anti-abortion Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, wrote in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) that "the consensus was not to make any change to our case assignment process at this time."

Many expected the typically non-reactive Judicial Conference, allergic to acknowledging the political dimension of the judicial system, to leave it at that. 

"We cracked it!" joked Jennifer Ahearn, senior counsel for the Brennan Center's Judiciary Program, pretending to imitate the Conference. 

Ahearn and her colleagues sent a letter, worried the Conference would consider its job done.

"The recent policy does not obviate the need for an amendment to the Federal Rules; indeed, one of the districts that is a major source of concern regarding the proliferation of judge-shopping, the Northern District of Texas, has already declined to make any changes in response to the policy," they wrote. 

But there are at least some signs that the momentum hasn't completely ebbed. The Civil Rules committee of the Conference said at its Tuesday meeting that it would keep researching and studying to see if an actual rule — versus its nonbinding policy — was necessary, with an eye on how districts implement the guidance. 

Meanwhile, pressure on the Conference continues to build. Schumer introduced a bill to codify the policy. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) — who advised judges to just ignore the new policy when it came out — introduced dueling legislation. A judge in the Northern District of Texas went on the record to tell the New York Times that the "consensus" his chief judge cited does not actually exist. This thing isn't over yet.

Just past noon on Monday, we hit our goal of adding 1000 new members during our annual membership drive! We currently sit at 1,197 new members. If you've been thinking about joining, but haven't yet made the jump, it's not too late. The drive and special discount continues through the weekend and ends on April 15th.