When the Trump administration needs something done in the courts, it comes to North Texas.
The Northern District of Texas has long been a destination for conservative interest groups to file cases. Increasingly, the Justice Department is following suit and that has given one judge in particular a lot of influence over huge federal policy decisions.
New York Times reporter Mattathias Schwartz examined O'Connor's court in his latest piece, "How Trump’s Policy Agenda Runs Through One Federal Court, in Texas" and joined NTX Now's Miranda Suarez and Ron Corning to discuss.
These interview highlights have been edited for length and clarity. To hear to this conversation in its entirety, click the 'listen' button above.
"Forum shopping"
Schwartz says something interesting about Texas is it does not assign cases randomly across its judicial districts.
"In northern Texas, the cases are assigned by division," he said. "So your case is assigned based on what division or what subset of the district it's filed in and those cases are not randomized. In some of those divisions, there's only one judge who's responsible for the whole thing, so you can actually know...in advance exactly which judge is going to hear your case."
He says this isn't normal in other parts of the country.
"North Texas has some very unusual rules, and there are very few districts in this country where you can know with such certainty that your case is going to be heard by a very conservative judge," Schwartz says.
People's concern
Schwartz explains that the Trump administration claims these policies can give an individual judge larger power over huge federal policy decisions.
"They say 'this judge is wielding too much power,'" he said. "This is a 'rogue' judge. So when they lose, they don't like individual judges exercising unilateral power over vast federal policies, but they come to North Texas and do get individual judges to do the exact same thing more or less in their favor, and we don't hear them complaining as much — or at all — when they win."
To read Schwartz's entire piece, click here.
Miranda Suarez and Ron Corning are the hosts of KERA's NTX Now. Got a tip? Email Miranda at msuarez@kera.org or Ron at rcorning@kera.org.
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