Are Trump's Challengers Forum Shopping for Favorable Judges to Hamstring the Administration?
Our analysis lends credence to the idea that Trump's opponents are strategically filing suit in district courts that give them the best chance to garner favorable rulings that paralyze the admin
Tipping the Scales: Why So Many Cases Against Trump Are Heard by Democrat-Appointed Judges
As the Trump administration faces substantial pushback in the courts, including an unprecedented wave of nationwide injunctions halting its policies, some are claiming that his opponents are tilting the scales of justice by selectively bringing their lawsuits before sympathetic courts in a practice called “forum shopping.”
The plaintiff’s goal in forum shopping is to launch their suit in a district where they are more likely to draw a sympathetic judge – ideally, a district that sits beneath an appellate court stacked with like-minded judges.
To see whether Trump’s challengers are engaging in forum shopping, at RealClearInvestigations I analyzed 350 cases brought against the administration.
We found that plaintiffs have brought 80% of those cases before just 11 of the nation’s 91 district courts. While Democrat presidents have appointed roughly 60% of all active district court judges, each of the 11 district courts where the anti-Trump challenges have been clustered boasts an even higher percentage of Democrat appointees. In several of these venues, the administration’s challengers are almost guaranteed that a judge picked by Joe Biden, Barack Obama, or Bill Clinton will preside over their case.
The analysis of these 350 cases, which covers all those identified in popular litigation trackers and our independent research as of this week, lends credence to claims that anti-Trump litigants may be strategically filing suit in courts where they are most likely to receive a favorable ruling – a practice that has been both pursued and decried by Democrats and Republicans.
We also analyzed three dozen cases in which judges imposed the most extreme restraint on the Trump administration by entering a nationwide or universal injunction – prohibiting the administration from enforcing its policy not only against the party bringing the case, but anyone, everywhere. The analysis shows that these injunctions have disproportionately emerged from Democrat-leaning courts where plaintiffs have brought the lion’s share of suits, and that Democrat-appointed judges are overwhelmingly responsible for ordering them.
You can read our analysis at RCI, and see the data below.
