The lawmakers sponsoring the bill said it was spurred by a recent ruling from a federal judge in Amarillo, Texas that could, if upheld on appeal limit access to the abortion pill mifepristone nationwide. Representative Deborah Ross of North Carolina introduced the bill in the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday and Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon said he would introduce the bill when the Senate returns from recess next week.
The only judge in Amarillo, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk an appointee of Republican former President Donald Trump, is a staunch conservative, who has also blocked Biden administration rules on immigration and healthcare protections for LGBTQ people.
The Democratic lawmakers said judge shopping erodes faith in the court system and gives a small group of judges a massive amount of power over government policy.
"It's alarming that one rogue judge in Amarillo, Texas – or anywhere – can make sweeping decisions that could harm millions of Americans," Wyden said.
The Biden administration has accused Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, and other states and conservative advocacy groups of purposely filing lawsuits in the Northern District of Texas because they would be assigned to conservative Trump appointees.
Judges in those courts have rejected motions by the Biden administration to transfer some of those lawsuits to other places. Kacsmaryk in March denied the administration's bid to transfer a case challenging its rule on socially conscious investing.
The Northern District of Texas, which includes Amarillo, is divided into seven divisions. The Dallas division has several judges but others, including Amarillo and Lubbock, only have one. The court's rules virtually guarantee civil cases in the single-judge divisions to be assigned to those lone judges instead of being allocated randomly as they are in other federal courts.
The new bill would require federal district courts to ensure that no judge has a greater than 25% chance of being assigned a civil case. Courts could designate judges from adjacent districts in the same state to serve in districts with fewer than four judges.
The proposal also would mandate that lawsuits seeking nationwide relief be assigned to three-judge panels that include at least one appeals court judge. A panel's ruling could be appealed directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The bill is just the latest sign that Democrats in Washington are growing increasingly frustrated with Republican attempts to block Biden administration policies by seeking out favorable venues for court challenges.
Last month, Democratic Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii introduced a separate bill to require that cases seeking nationwide relief be channeled to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
The next day, top U.S. Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer of New York warned .S. District Judge David Godbey, the Northern District's chief judge that Congress could intervene unless he agreed to reform the method of assigning cases to judges in the district.
Godbey in a letter responding to Schumer last week said he was confident that the judges in his district were impartial and that he lacks the power to unilaterally adopt new procedures for assigning cases.