Supreme Court curbs injunctions that blocked Trump's birthright citizenship plan

[BumRushDaShow]

35. Exactly.

They went after everything that Biden tried to put in place and filed in the 5th Circuit -

May 15, 2024

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals Is Spearheading a Judicial Power Grab

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Judge shopping leads to nationwide injunctions at the 5th Circuit

Judge shopping has provided an efficient way for right-wing litigants and conservative state attorneys general to get their priorities before the 5th Circuit and, subsequently, the Supreme Court. Typically, various guardrails prevent litigants from judge shopping, or strategically filing cases in certain courts to draw a sympathetic judge.56 However, the structure and venue rules of several district courts within the 5th Circuit—particularly the Northern District of Texas and Western District of Louisiana—allow the right-wing legal movement to hand-pick the judges they want to hear their cases. This lies in contravention of the general principle under the American legal system that litigants should not get to pick which judge hears a case.57

District courts—also known as federal trial courts—in Texas serve geographically large areas such that they are divided into local divisions, many of which have only one active judge.58 District courts make their own rules as to how cases are assigned, which in some cases can enable litigants to strategically file cases where they are guaranteed a certain judge.59 The right-wing legal movement has taken advantage of this, filing cases in divisions with particularly radical right-wing jurists—many of whom were appointed by President Trump—who will likely be sympathetic to politically charged claims.60

The abuse of judge shopping has also led to a proliferation of nationwide injunctions blocking Biden administration policies.61 Essentially, it only takes a single district court judge—such as Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo, Texas—to issue a procedural halt, called an injunction, to prevent a federal policy from going into effect across the country, or even reversing a federal policy that has been in operation for some time.62 During the Trump administration, the right-wing legal movement decried liberal-leaning circuits issuing nationwide injunctions, suggesting they were an abuse of judicial power.63 But during the Biden administration, the conservative legal movement became noticeably quieter on the matter, as extreme right-wing organizations utilized judge shopping in single-judge divisions to issue these types of expansive injunctions on Biden administration policies.64

The pattern often goes as follows: A conservative attorney general or a litigant with significant ties to right-wing organizations files a lawsuit challenging a Biden administration policy in a single-judge division with a highly partisan jurist, guaranteeing a favorable outcome.65 The district court judge issues a nationwide injunction blocking the policy, which inevitably goes to the 5th Circuit and often up to the Supreme Court.66 For example, since 2021, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed more than two dozen challenges to the Biden administration’s immigration policies, seeking nationwide injunctive relief—but none were filed in Austin, Texas, where his office is located. Rather, the cases have been brought in far-flung divisions in Texas where Paxton can choose the judge.67 In Austin, a judge would have been randomly selected from the six jurists serving in that division, most of whom are relatively moderate.68

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