Conservative Federal Court Says It Won’t Follow New Guidelines Against 'Judge Shopping'

Judge David Godbey, the chief judge of the Northern Texas federal district court division, told Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on March 29 that his court would not follow new guidelines meant to curtail the practice of “judge shopping,” a strategy that conservatives have increasingly used to strike down the policies of President Joe Biden.

“It is unfortunate that Chief Judge Godbey and the district judges of the Northern District of Texas have decided to continue to allow the odious practice of judge shopping,” Schumer said in a statement on April 1. “In doing so, they are allowing plaintiffs to choose their judge — a practice that the Judicial Conference has issued guidance to try to curtail.”

The Northern Texas federal district courts have been a hotbed of judge shopping by conservative activists ever since Biden took office. Judge shopping is the practice of a plaintiff filing suit in a particular judicial division with the knowledge that the division’s cases are overseen by only one judge — a judge the plaintiff knows is favorable to their cause.

The most notable example of this comes from the Amarillo, Texas, courtroom of federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, where conservatives have repeatedly filed suits with little geographic relationship to Northern Texas, but large national ambitions to block Biden administration policies. Kacsmaryk, who previously worked as a lawyer for religious right groups, played his part by issuing controversial decisions that put in place national injunctions to block Biden’s policies from immigration to the approval of the abortion drug mifepristone.

After being criticized by national Democrats and even federal judges, the Judicial Conference, the 26-member oversight body that