1. FACDL-Miami calls for reform at the Miami SAO. Their statement is here.
2. There's a new federal rule to prevent forum shopping. The NYT story:
When anti-abortion activists sued the Food and Drug Administration in 2022 seeking to overturn the approval of the abortion drug mifepristone, they filed their suit in the federal court in Amarillo, Texas, where it was all but assured that the case would be heard by Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk, an outspoken opponent of abortion.
Judge Kacsmaryk, the sole federal judge in Amarillo, wound up agreeing with the plaintiffs that the drug was “unsafe.” In his ruling, he invalidated the F.D.A.’s 23-year-old approval of the drug and opened a new front in the post-Dobbs reckoning over abortion rights.
The suit — and the role of Judge Kacsmaryk, who handles 95 percent of the Amarillo civil caseload — was one of the most striking recent examples of “forum shopping,” where plaintiffs to try to cherry-pick sympathetic judges.
Now, forum shopping is about to get harder.
The panel of federal judges who set policy for the rest of federal judiciary on Tuesday announced a new rule intended to curb the practice in civil cases with nationwide implications, like the mifepristone suit.
In such cases, where plaintiffs are seeking a sweeping remedy, like a nationwide injunction, the judge will be assigned at random from across the district instead of defaulting to the judge or judges in a particular courthouse.
3. Justices Sotomayor and Barrett discuss relationships on the Court (also via the NYT):
A week after Justice Amy Coney Barrett chastised Justice Sonia Sotomayor for choosing “to amplify disagreement with stridency” in a Supreme Court decision on former President Donald J. Trump’s eligibility to hold office, the two women appeared together on Tuesday to discuss civics and civility.
They gave, for the most part, a familiar account of a collegial court whose members know how to disagree without being disagreeable.
“We don’t speak in a hot way at our conferences,” Justice Barrett said, referring to the private meetings at which the justices discuss cases. “We don’t raise our voices no matter how hot-button the case is.”
Justice Sotomayor, who usually gives a sunny description of relations between the justices, registered a partial dissent.
“Occasionally someone might come close to something that could be viewed as hurtful,” Justice Sotomayor said. When that happens, she said, a senior colleague will sometimes call the offending justice, suggesting an apology or other way of patching things up.
Similar interactions can happen if a draft opinion is too sharp, she said. “There is dialogue around that, an attempt to find a different expression,” she said.
4. The U.S. Marshals want more $$ to protect the Justices. Via Bloomberg:
The US Marshals Service is seeking $28 million to staff permanent protective details for the Supreme Court justices’ homes, a task it says is straining agency resources nationwide, according to a Justice Department fiscal 2025 budget proposal.
The Marshals Service—which provides protection for members of the federal judiciary—has been temporarily deploying deputy US marshals from each of the country’s 94 judicial districts to handle the 24/7 security for the justices’ nine main residences, plus one vacation home, according to budget documents published Monday.
In fiscal 2023, 23% of deputy US marshals supported at least one residential protection rotation at a justice’s home lasting two to three weeks, according to the budget document. The request says that the service currently sends each new graduating class of deputy US marshals “immediately” to the justices’ homes, where they work for 75 days.
The Marshal Service said that, as it deals with other security requests tied to “high-visibility” cases, it needs permanent staff to secure the homes. The service said that full-time personnel is preferred, especially those with specific training who can work toward “the best outcome if an attack or other threat event should occur.” It also cites “the extreme level of impact to the government and the nation if the Justices are not properly safeguarded” in making the request.
1 comment:
As far as security is concerned, we also need to provide security for the homes of federal district and court of appeal judges. They are targets as well, and while they may have signed up for dangerous duty, their families have not. And, we have seen federal judges and their family members killed.
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