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John Doe wrote:

On 10/16/2024 7:05 PM, Ubiquitous wrote:

During former President Donald Trump’s first term, many left-wing
interest groups ran to courts chock-full of leftist federal judges in,
among other places, California, Hawaii, and Washington state. Because
of the Senate’s “blue slip” policy — an unwritten rule that allows >> home-state senators to veto district court judicial nominees — there
was no real doubt that these groups would draw a judge ideologically
similar to them. These district court judges proceeded to issue
sweeping injunction after sweeping injunction, and various Trump
policies were bogged down for years as the Department of Justice
appealed. These left-wing groups either stopped, or at least
significantly stalled, many Trump policies.

When President Joe Biden assumed office, shrewd Republicans fired off
their own litigation shots. Texas’s firebrand attorney general, Ken
Paxton, has been particularly successful in procuring injunctions in
certain Texas-based federal courts against Biden’s myriad overreaches.
Furious, leftists are now seeking to thwart Paxton by taking away a
tool he has utilized to great effect: the single-judge division.

Congress divides federal district courts by state, district, and
division. For instance, the state of Illinois has three districts: the
Northern, Southern and Central Districts. Within the Northern District,
there are two divisions: the Western Division, based in the small city
of Rockford and with only one active judge; and the much larger Eastern
Division, with around two dozen active judges in Chicago. Likewise,
Texas has several districts and, within each one, there are many
divisions. One such division is the Amarillo Division of the Northern
District of Texas. That division has precisely one active judge:
Matthew Kacsmaryk.

Judge Kacsmaryk has enraged leftists with several rulings that have
enjoined Biden administration policies. For instance, he ruled that the
Food and Drug Administration had approved the abortifacient
mifepristone in an unlawful manner. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately
reversed this decision, and Judge Kacsmaryk’s ruling never took effect
because he had the humility to stay it.

Nevertheless, left-wing activists are now attempting to use the
Judicial Conference, the supervisory body that essentially acts as the
federal judiciary’s own Deep State, to end the use of single-judge
divisions in all cases of injunctions against the federal or state
government. Earlier this year, the Judicial Conference issued “advisory
guidelines” to all the nation’s district courts, recommending that all >> cases be randomly assigned throughout the district in which they are
filed — regardless of the division that actually receives the filing.

Conservatives have properly protested this thinly veiled ideological
power grab. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., for
instance, reminded the Judicial Conference that the legally relevant
congressional statute — 28 U.S.C. § 137 — clearly vests district
courts with the power to decide how to divvy up their own case
assignments.

Now, just weeks before a monumental election, leftists have once again
ramped up their efforts to ram through a rule in the Rules Committee of
the Judicial Conference that would make the previously “advisory”
guidance outright mandatory, thus caving to the demands of, among
others, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and the Biden
Justice Department. The Judicial Conference purports to locate such
authority in the Rules Enabling Act, the 1930s-era statute that
authorizes the Judicial Conference to prescribe rules of civil and
criminal procedure for the federal judiciary.

But Congress — not the judiciary — has the ultimate power to reject any >> rule promulgated by the Rules Enabling Act. Congress should not
hesitate to exercise such power, should the Judicial Conference succeed
in pushing through its single-judge division edict.

But regardless of the election result, it is crucial to flag the left’s
latest effort to decimate long-standing judicial norms simply because
leftists are furious that they are not consistently getting their way
in case outcomes. This attempt mirrors Justice Elena Kagan’s desperate
and ludicrous call for lower federal courts to supervise the Supreme
Court when it comes to recusal decisions. The proposal now before the
Judicial Conference’s Rules Committee caves to the whining of leftist
commentators upset over politically charged rulings. It is a nakedly
political power grab.

Should the Rules Committee adopt the proposal, the Supreme Court needs
to put its foot down. Because the justices have been issuing many
decisions that leftists detest, the court in recent years has been
subject to numerous high-profile political and physical attacks.
Justices’ homes have been constant targets of protest, and Nicholas
Roske, a leftist pro-abortion activist from California, attempted to
assassinate Justice Brett Kavanaugh and his family after the May 2022
leak of the draft majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health
Organization, which restored the power of legislatures to regulate
abortion.

Justices have also faced frivolous ethics complaints. For instance,
leftists have demanded that Justice Samuel Alito recuse from January 6
-related cases based on his wife’s personal flag-flying preferences.
The Judicial Conference’s proposed single-judge division elimination
effort is yet another such attack. For many years, Judge William Wayne
Justice, a hardcore left-wing jurist in Tyler, Texas, operated a
single-division court. Litigants seeking leftist results repeatedly
filed cases in his courtroom. No Judicial Conference rules change
occurred. No Senate leaders protested. The American Bar Association
adopted no resolution of disapproval. Funny how that works!

Congress can also act — and has the leverage to do so. Right now, the
Judicial Conference wants the U.S. House to pass two separate judge-
related bills. One of those bills would authorize about 66 new federal
judgeships; the other would extend some temporary judgeships. The House
Judiciary Committee should refuse to act on either bill until the
Judicial Conference agrees it will not alter the case-assignment
process through its Deep State committees. Congress should demand that
if the Judicial Conference wants changes to case-assignment procedure,
it will seek new authorizing legislation so as to not create a conflict
with 28 U.S.C. § 137. Congress, which alone writes federal law under
our Constitution, must shut down the Judicial Conference’s highly
dubious Rules Enabling Act legal theory of delegated power.

Fact is, if one side can use lawful tools to stop or delay a
president’s policies, then the other side must have the same
opportunity. Leftists attempt to distinguish the current situation
because litigants like Paxton are picking a particular judge — but
leftists’ filing in districts universally populated with fellow rabid
leftists is entirely indistinguishable. Intellectual consistency, alas,
is not always the left’s strong suit.

The past few years have been miserable ones for left-wing legal
observers, who have seen so many of their once-treasured victories
eroded or overturned. They are now lashing out with maniacal proposals
to pack the Supreme Court, subordinate the justices’ recusal decisions
to the whims of lower courts, and many other radical ideas. All
represent a grave threat to judicial independence akin to that lodged
by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the late 1930s, when his New Deal
legislation suffered legal setbacks. Just as a Congress dominated by
Democrats rejected Roosevelt’s dangerous court-packing power grab, so
too must the Supreme Court and Congress reject these new attempts —
including the Judicial Conference’s proposal to eliminate the use of
single-judge divisions in politically charged cases.

This is pretty laughable coming from the party that announced a
democratic president couldn't nominate a supreme court justice in his
last year and when a Republican was in power suddenly it was just fine
again.

"But but but they do it tooooo!!!!"
Except they do not.

Whataboutism noted.
Get back to us when you have a real argument to make.

--
Let's go Brandon!

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