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Trump rigged the federal judiciary against Biden, now Justice is fighting back [1]

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Date: 2023-02-14  

He’s also, as Milhiser sums up, this guy:

Matthew Kacsmaryk’s record reads like he’s the villain in a parable about a puritanical witch-hunter. A former lawyer at a Christian right law firm, Kacsmaryk has claimed that being transgender is a “mental disorder,” and that all gay people are “disordered.” He’s railed against a “Sexual Revolution” that began in the 1960s and 1970s, which supposedly claims “that marriage, sexuality, gender identity, and even the unborn child must yield to the erotic desires of liberated adults.”

It’s not just the icky sex stuff he’s got a problem with, of course. It’s anything the 20th century advanced politically and culturally. He’s racked up quite the track record in a few years on the bench, blocking Biden administration policies on immigrant, reproductive, and LGBTQ rights. “I’m hard-pressed to think of a federal judge who has had a greater impact in less time,” Stephen Vladeck, a University of Texas at Austin School of Law professor told Bloomberg Law.

There are four judicial districts in Texas, Northern, Eastern, Westerns and Southern. Kascmayrk is on the Northern. The way cases are assigned in the district has ensured that any case filed in Amarillo goes to Kacsmaryk. So all those right-wing groups who want to challenge the Biden administration or the rights of everyone who isn’t a wealthy white, white, straight male knows where to go.

The Justice Department is trying to stop that, arguing that federal allows that “an entity with the capacity to sue and be sued . . . shall be deemed to reside . . . only in the judicial district in which it maintains its principal place of business,” and that the state of Texas—a plaintiff—officially is in Austin as its place of business, putting it in the Western District. The DOJ argues that “‘the interest[s] of justice’ alone favor transfer” because “the public’s interest in the fair administration of justice would be harmed if a filing with strong indicia of judge shopping were left unchecked.”

That gets at something much larger in the federal judiciary—the legitimacy of the courts. Assuming this challenge for a change of venue goes to the Supreme Court, what will be at issue out in front o the public is the manipulation of the courts by extreme political actors for the decisions they want handed down, like the end of abortion rights across the nation. That’s not something that the Supreme Court likely wants to see debated in the public sphere right now, when its legitimacy is already suspect.

It’s frankly a relief to see that the tactic of judge shopping has risen to the level that DOJ is calling it out and fighting it, potentially all the way to the Supreme Court. Keep going!

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/14/2152970/-Justice-Department-challenges-right-wing-extremist-judge-shopping-in-Texas

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