Federal courts move to restrict 'judge shopping,' which got attention after abortion medication case
Federal courts are moving to make it harder to file lawsuits in front of judges seen as friendly to a point of view, a practice known as judge shopping that gained national attention in a major abortion-medication case
WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal courts moved Tuesday to make it harder to file lawsuits in front of judges seen as friendly to a point of view, a practice known as judge shopping that gained national attention in a major abortion medication case.
The new policy covers civil suits that would affect an entire state or the whole country. It would require a judge to be randomly assigned, even in areas where locally filed cases have gone before a single judge.
Cases are already assigned at random under plans in most of the country’s 94 federal district courts, but some plans assign cases to judges in the smaller division where the case is filed. In divisions with only one judge, often in rural areas, that means private or state attorneys can essentially pick which judge will hear it.
