Republicans Keep Turning to the Same Texas Judges to Block Biden’s Policies

Authored by newrepublic.com and submitted by malarkeyfreezone
image for Republicans Keep Turning to the Same Texas Judges to Block Biden’s Policies

The partisan valence of these cases makes them a particularly good example of the problem. But high-profile cases aren’t the only places where Texas’s dearth of federal judges is causing headaches. Consider the plight of Judge Alan Albright, a federal district court judge in the Western District of Texas. Former President Donald Trump nominated Albright for the position in 2018, and the Senate confirmed him in a voice vote that same year. He joined the bench after a private-practice career where he focused on patent-related cases. Since his confirmation, the Western District has become a hub of patent-related litigation, as lawyers from across the country seek out his apparent expertise and wisdom in such disputes.

“Since [Albright] took the bench, more than 1,400 patent cases have been filed in Waco—far more than the division received in its prior thirty-five years of existence,” J. Jonas Anderson and Paul R. Gugliuzza, two law professors who scrutinized the phenomenon, wrote in a Duke Law Review article last year. They also noted that his district became a haven for a particularly pernicious type of patent litigant: the so-called “non-practicing entity,” or NPE, which is the neutral term for a person or company that owns a patent but does not actually use it. They are more commonly described as “patent trolls” for allegedly misusing the legal system.

Albright played no small role in drawing such cases to him. Almost immediately after his confirmation, he began appearing at conferences and bar association meetings to discuss why patent lawyers should file cases in his district. “Most colorfully, he gave a presentation at the 2019 annual meeting of the American Intellectual Property Law Association titled, ‘Why You Should File Your Next Patent Case Across the Street From the “Hey Sugar,’’’ referring to a candy store near his Waco courthouse,” Anderson and Gugliuzza wrote. Since Albright is the only judge assigned to the Waco Division, plaintiffs can guarantee that he will be the one to hear their case if they file it in that division. Toward the end of 2021, nearly 900 patent-related cases had been assigned to Albright, amounting to roughly 25 percent of all patent cases in the entire nation.

“We believe this creates an appearance of impropriety which damages the federal judiciary’s reputation for the fair and equal administration of the law,” Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy and Republican Senator Thom Tillis wrote in a letter on Albright’s actions to Chief Justice John Roberts last November, which was addressed in his capacity as the Judicial Conference’s presiding officer. “Worse still, such behavior by plaintiffs can lead individual judges to engage in inappropriate conduct intended to attract and retain certain types of cases and litigants.” Roberts, writing in his year-end report on the federal courts last December, said the conference would be looking into the matter further. The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals, which handles appeals for patent cases, also castigated Albright last fall for refusing to transfer cases to jurisdictions that are more convenient for the litigants.

welestgw on March 15th, 2022 at 13:42 UTC »

"activist judges"

homebrew_1 on March 15th, 2022 at 10:45 UTC »

These are the activist judges Republicans keep talking about.

malarkeyfreezone on March 15th, 2022 at 10:20 UTC »

This practice is known as judge-shopping, and two Northern District judges in particular sit atop Republicans’ wish list: Judge Reed O’Connor, the George W. Bush appointee who gutted the Indian Child Welfare Act and tried to overturn the Affordable Care Act, and Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who blocked the Biden administration’s efforts to end the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” program for asylum applicants on the Southern border. ...

Of the 20 lawsuits filed against the Biden administration by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, 13 were filed in district court divisions with only a single judge, all of whom were Trump appointees. Last September, for instance, Paxton filed a legal challenge to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s guidance for gender identity and workplace discrimination in the Amarillo Division of the Northern District. By filing there, he effectively ensured that it would be heard by Kacsmaryk, who staunchly opposed anti-discrimination protections for gay and transgender Americans in his pre-judicial career. Kacsmaryk came under intense criticism during his confirmation process for previously describing homosexuality as “disordered” and signed a letter in 2016 that described being transgender as “a delusion.”