Paul Blumenthal is a senior reporter with the HuffPost Politics team based in Washington, D.C. He covers courts, elections, political economy and political history.
on Wednesday preventing the practice of “judge-shopping,” which conservatives have used to ensure they get a favorable hearing when trying to strike down Biden administration policies.
The new rules put forward by the conference followed years of controversy over the practice of judge-shopping exploited by conservatives. Conservative activist groups and GOP attorneys general have increasingly directed their lawsuits against Biden administration policies to single-judge geographical divisions in Texas where they know they will get a sympathetic hearing.
“Judicial Conference policy is not legislation,” the letter states. “It is Congress that decides how cases should be assigned in the inferior courts and Congress has already spoken on this issue in an enacted statute: Congress gave that power to the individual district courts. Whatever the Judicial Conference thinks you ought to do, what you actually choose to do is left to your court’s discretion under the law.
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