U.S. courts clarify limits on ‘judge shopping’ are guidance
Federal judiciary leaders on Friday released the text of a revised policy directing district courts to assign judges at random in civil cases that have statewide or national implications, making clear that the policy is a recommendation and that they cannot force district courts to follow it.
The Committee on Court Administration and Case Management of the Judicial Conference of the United States, the policymaking body for the federal courts, released the guidance after receiving intense pushback about the change from judges, conservative lawmakers and judicial experts.
On Tuesday, conference officials announced that cases with statewide or national implications that are filed in single-judge divisions should no longer be automatically assigned to the judges who preside there. Such divisions exist in rural parts of the country where courthouses are spaced very far apart.
District courts may continue to assign cases to a single-judge division if those cases don’t seek to bar or mandate state or federal actions through declaratory judgment or injunctive relief, the Judicial Conference said. When random assignments are required, the case should be assigned to a judge within the same judicial district. The policy does not apply to criminal or bankruptcy cases, according to the memo released Friday. “Case assignment in the bankruptcy context remains under study.”
The memo, shared with district court judges across the country, includes guidance explaining how the judges might follow the updated rule “while recognizing the statutory authority and discretion that district courts have with respect to case assignment.”
Judicial Conference officials said their intent is to address widespread concerns about “judge shopping” — or filing a lawsuit in a courthouse where the lone judge is known or suspected to be sympathetic to a particular cause. The tactic has drawn scrutiny in abortion, immigration and environmental cases, among other hot-button topics, as well as in patent cases, which have been concentrated in a single-judge courthouse in the Waco division of the Western District of Texas.
But the changes proposed to address the concerns have drawn a wave of new objections, with some saying the new policy violates federal statute 28 U.S.C. 137, which says that the chief judges of each district court are responsible for assigning cases.
In the Friday memo, the committee said it was providing instructions on how to deter judge-shopping, not issuing a direct mandate, which would conflict with chief judges’ case assignment authority.
The policies and the accompanying guidance “should not be viewed as impairing a court’s authority or discretion,” Jackie Koszczuk, spokeswoman for the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, said. “Rather, they set out various ways for courts to align their case assignment practices with the long-standing Judicial Conference policy of random case assignment.”
Russell Wheeler, a judicial expert at the Brookings Institution, said the guidance “suggests, without saying so directly,” that conference officials are acting on their authority under federal statute 28 U.S.C. 331 to “submit suggestions and recommendations to the various courts to promote uniformity of management procedures and the expeditious conduct of court business.”