Judiciary Issues Guidance to Courts on New Judge Shopping Policy

The US judiciary’s policy arm issued guidance to courts encouraging federal judges to assign all civil cases in a way that limits judge-shopping.

The Judicial Conference late Friday followed up on its policy announcement on March 12 that it says strengthens its case assignment procedures.

The new policy would randomly assign lawsuits seeking to block a state or federal action to any judge within the court. It aims to prevent litigants seeking to select a preferred judge from filing requests for nationwide injunctions in single-judge divisions.

The announcement, included in a public statement on the US Courts website, quickly drew criticism for appearing to focus on political cases and to exclude patent and bankruptcy cases, two areas that have long drawn concerns about venue-shopping.

The guidance to federal judges and court staff on Friday spelled out how judges could promote random case assignment. The guidance encouraged them to adopt practices that limit judge-shopping for “all civil cases, including patent cases.”

The guidance urges judges to “avoid case assignment practices that result in the likelihood that a case will be assigned to a particular judge,” unless it is determined that the litigation should proceed in a particular geographic location.

Alternative practices could include assigning all civil cases randomly through a court district, assigning certain categories of cases randomly, or sharing case assignments randomly among a few single-judge divisions, the guidance says.

According to a footnote, the judiciary’s case management committee considered assignment issues in patent cases last year, and found given the “complexities associated with case assignment,” that “guidance on achieving random case assignment would benefit courts and that regular review of case assignment plans should be encouraged,” the footnote says.

The guidance also states that bankruptcy cases were not specifically considered in drafting this guidance, but that case assignment in the bankruptcy context “remains under study.”

A spokesperson for the Administrative Office of the US Courts said the policies and accompanying guidance “inform the district courts’ statutory authority and discretion” under existing laws governing how courts should allocate caseloads.

“They should not be viewed as impairing a court’s authority or discretion. 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,” the spokesperson said.

The March 12 case assignment announcement has drawn fierce backlash from conservatives, who have alleged it targets legal venues preferred by conservative litigants.

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) sent a letter Thursday that appeared to go out to chief judges suggesting they could ignore the conference’s directive and arguing it’s up to Congress to decide how cases should be assigned in the lower courts.