President Trump\u2019s Justice Department had a problem. Judge after judge was rejecting its demands that hospitals across the country turn over internal records of transgender care provided to children.<\/p>\n
By the end of April, federal judges in Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles and Seattle had either quashed or substantially pared back the administration\u2019s demands that hospitals send patient records to the federal government.<\/p>\n
But the administration did not give up. Instead, in April, it went to the Northern District of Texas\u2019 Fort Worth courthouse, where nearly all cases go directly to the district\u2019s chief judge, Reed O\u2019Connor, or a second judge, Mark T. Pittman, who was appointed by Mr. Trump.<\/p>\n
There were no hospitals in Texas that offered the transgender care at issue \u2014 state lawmakers banned<\/a> gender-affirming care for minors in Texas in 2023. But the Justice Department asked the Texas court to enforce a subpoena to the Rhode Island Hospital, arguing<\/a> that its nationwide investigation of such medical care was \u201cbeing carried out in the Northern District of Texas.\u201d<\/p>\n That was enough for Judge O\u2019Connor, an appointee of President George W. Bush who has built a reputation as a conservative stalwart and became the district\u2019s chief judge last August.<\/p>\n He granted the motion, clearing the way for the hospital to turn over a variety of personal data, including the names and Social Security numbers of minors who had received treatment.<\/p>\n \u201cThe subpoena\u2019s demands are reasonable,\u201d he wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n Most of the country\u2019s 94 district courts assign cases randomly across all of their judges.<\/p>\n Northern Texas, where Judge O\u2019Connor sits, does things its own way. It assigns cases to judges based on the courthouse within the district where the lawsuit is initially filed. Some courthouses are staffed by just one or two judges, meaning litigants can easily engage in \u201cjudge shopping\u201d \u2014 filing their case in a particular courthouse and knowing to a certainty or near-certainty which judge will decide it.<\/p>\n In four of Northern Texas\u2019 seven courthouses, one judge appointed by Mr. Trump hears all of the cases. In a fifth courthouse, all the cases go to Judge O\u2019Connor. In a sixth \u2014 Fort Worth \u2014 90 percent of the caseload is split between Judge O\u2019Connor and Judge Pittman.<\/p>\n Of the district\u2019s nine active-status judges, eight were appointed by Republican presidents \u2014 six of them by Mr. Trump. There are other districts in the country where more of the judges are Trump appointees, but very few assign cases the way Northern Texas does. And most fall outside the jurisdiction of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, widely considered to be the country\u2019s most conservative appellate court, which hears appeals from Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.<\/p>\n For years, conservative interest groups and the Texas attorney general\u2019s office have filed lawsuits in Northern Texas, taking advantage of the district\u2019s unusual case-assignment rules. Now, with Mr. Trump back in office, Judge O\u2019Connor\u2019s district has emerged as a destination for the Justice Department, as well.<\/p>\n A spokesman for the Justice Department declined to comment about the practice. Judge O\u2019Connor did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n In quick succession this year, Judge O\u2019Connor has struck down Biden-era rules regarding ghost guns<\/a> and immigration courts<\/a>. He has also issued several rapid-fire orders allowing the Trump administration to reach sweeping legal settlements<\/a> with opponents who appeared to actually share the federal government\u2019s ideological goals.<\/p>\n Legal scholars have stressed for years that Democratic administrations and states have also availed themselves of districts with a high concentration of judges seen as more liberal. But many draw a distinction<\/a> between the more prevalent practice of \u201cforum shopping\u201d \u2014 that is, filing in a region where groups of judges have been generally considered friendly \u2014 and that of effectively filing directly to an individual judge.<\/p>\n Kevin Wagner, a political science professor at Florida Atlantic University, said the precision of venue shopping in Texas was unusual, having reached the point where litigants could achieve not just a \u201cfavorable\u201d venue but even a \u201cpredictable\u201d one.<\/p>\n The administration\u2019s efforts to get major cases with nationwide consequences in front of Judge O\u2019Connor come even as it condemns other judges for going beyond their remit.<\/p>\n Justice Department officials and Republicans in Congress have taken to calling trial court judges who exercise too much unilateral power \u201crogue judges.\u201d But those criticisms from Mr. Trump\u2019s supporters about judicial overreach are seldom aimed at judges who issue sweeping rulings that support his agenda.<\/p>\n Assigning major cases by geography as opposed to a random draw \u201cundermines the appearance of impartiality,\u201d said Nancy Gertner, a retired federal judge and a lecturer at Harvard Law School, who has been critical of the Trump administration. She said the recent attacks on the judiciary\u2019s credibility by the political branches made it \u201call the more important that the standards for case assignment are fair.\u201d<\/p>\n Balls and Strikes<\/p>\n Judge O\u2019Connor, a 61-year-old former federal prosecutor who spent time as a congressional aide before he was nominated to the bench in 2007, has emerged as a reliable skeptic of federal actions that cut against conservative orthodoxy. In 2015, he issued orders blocking paid family leave for gay couples<\/a> and striking down<\/a> a 1960s-era ban on interstate handgun sales.<\/p>\n In 2016, he struck down guidance crafted by the Obama administration directing schools to allow transgender students to use bathrooms consistent with their gender identity. In a ruling blocking the rule nationwide, he found any government guidance that included that \u201cthe definition of sex includes gender identity\u201d to be illegal.<\/p>\n Born in Texas, Judge O\u2019Connor graduated from the University of Houston and received a law degree from the South Texas College of Law Houston in 1989.<\/p>\n He served nearly a decade as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Northern District of Texas, and was detailed by the Justice Department to serve as counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2003, advising Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah and the panel\u2019s chairman. In 2005, he was sent to assist an immigration-related subcommittee, this time working under Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas.<\/p>\n \u201cThroughout his legal career and time on the federal bench, Judge O\u2019Connor has called balls and strikes to help preserve our independent judiciary and uphold our Constitution, and Texas is better off for it,\u201d Senator Cornyn said in a statement.<\/p>\n During Judge O\u2019Connor\u2019s 2007 confirmation hearing, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island voiced concern about judicial nominees who he perceived to be feigning independence, only to hand down rulings in line with what he called their \u201cpolitical orthodoxy.\u201d<\/p>\n In response, Judge O\u2019Connor said he would follow in the path of judges who are \u201cloyal only to the Constitution\u201d and \u201ccall the cases as they see them.\u201d<\/p>\n A Familiar Bench<\/p>\n Judge O\u2019Connor\u2019s recent prominence is tied to how the Northern District of Texas assigns its cases.<\/p>\n Judge O\u2019Connor now serves as the sole federal judge in Wichita Falls, Texas, hearing every case brought in that division. He also covers cases in the Fort Worth division, where for a time he was the only judge.<\/p>\n All cases filed in the Abilene, Lubbock and San Angelo divisions are heard by Judge James Wesley Hendrix, another Trump appointee. And yet another Trump appointee \u2014 Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk \u2014 handles every case in the Amarillo division. In 2023, Judge Kacsmaryk issued a well-known ruling against the legality of mifepristone, an abortion drug, after an anti-abortion group incorporated in his district a few months before filing the suit there.<\/p>\n Miles T. Armaly, an associate professor of political science at the University of Mississippi who coauthored a study<\/a> on judge shopping in May, said the district\u2019s power and popularity were linked to its position under the Fifth Circuit, which has upheld several of Judge O\u2019Connor\u2019s most contested rulings.<\/p>\n Even so, the circuit has jumped ahead of the Supreme Court in scrutinizing others, including rulings<\/a> on Biden-era pistol brace<\/a> regulations and a dispute<\/a> between Elon Musk\u2019s social media platform X and the liberal watchdog organization Media Matters.<\/p>\n Even after the Supreme Court\u2019s decision last year curtailing the power of individual judges<\/a> to block federal policies nationwide, Mr. Armaly said, single-judge divisions remain an important tool for litigants with political goals that extend outside the district.<\/p>\n The new limitations on nationwide injunctions took \u201cone of the tools out of the tool kit,\u201d he said, \u201cbut the construction project is still the same.\u201d<\/p>\n Particularly under the second Trump administration, the Fifth Circuit has also emerged as a pipeline of contested decisions<\/a> that the Supreme Court has increasingly been forced to untangle. It also stands out as the most reversed appeals court.<\/p>\n Alexander Gouzoules, an associate professor at the at the University of Missouri School of Law, said the combination of factors in Texas that allows litigants to choose a judge with known views and survive an appeal has increasingly encouraged people seeking an \u201coutlier result\u201d to file there over the past decade.<\/p>\n \u201cAny one of these problems might be solvable on its own,\u201d he said. \u201cBut when they\u2019re combined with each other, there is a sort of exponential effect on the kind of destabilizing outcomes it produces.\u201d<\/p>\n Single-judge divisions have sparked bipartisan complaints.<\/p>\n In 2021, a report on patent filings noted that litigants were funneling 20 percent of all patent lawsuits nationwide to a single judge in the Western District of Texas. The study prompted Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, and Senator Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, to write a letter<\/a> demanding a review; their concerns were later cited<\/a> by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.<\/p>\n Complaints grew so loud that in March 2024, the Judicial Conference of the United States, the administrative and policy-making arm of the federal judiciary, adopted new, nonbinding policy guidance advising judicial districts to randomly assign cases when major federal policies with nationwide implications were at stake.<\/p>\n \u201cThe random case-assignment policy deters judge shopping,\u201d said Judge Robert J. Conrad Jr., who heads the federal courts\u2019 Administrative Office, in an announcement. \u201cIt promotes the impartiality of proceedings and bolsters public confidence in the federal judiciary.\u201d<\/p>\n The proposed changes were not well received in Texas.<\/p>\n Two weeks later, the Northern District\u2019s chief judge at the time, David C. Godbey, announced<\/a> that the judges of the district had met and decided not to adopt the change.<\/p>\n Judge O\u2019Connor added his voice later that year, denouncing the Judicial Conference\u2019s recommendation as an attack on his district, in a speech to<\/a> the conservative Federalist Society.<\/p>\n He complained that the conference\u2019s comments were hypocritical, criticizing the Justice Department under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. as \u201ca frequent forum shopper.\u201d And he lamented the Judicial Conference\u2019s decision as bowing to \u201cexternal political criticism\u201d from \u201cso-called commentators and elected political officials\u201d that he said were intent on \u201cundermining the judiciary.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMake no mistake about it: This pressure remains,\u201d he said. \u201cIt remains a constant source of pressure and will not ease up any time soon.\u201d<\/p>\n One-Day Orders<\/p>\n With Mr. Trump\u2019s return to the White House, the administration has repeatedly filed crucial matters in Judge O\u2019Connor\u2019s divisions.<\/p>\n Last summer, the Justice Department sued Texas in Wichita Falls, where Judge O\u2019Connor handles every case. The lawsuit challenged a first-of-its-kind Texas law that granted in-state tuition to undocumented students. Texas lawmakers had in recent years tried unsuccessfully to repeal the statute, which was adopted on a bipartisan basis in 2011.<\/p>\n Instead, Ken Paxton, the Republican Texas attorney general and a close ally of Mr. Trump, made no effort to defend the law, instead working with the Justice Department to draw up a hasty legal agreement to strike it down. Outside groups argued that the proposed agreement was an abuse of the court system because the federal government and the state of Texas were on the same side.<\/p>\n But Judge O\u2019Connor approved the settlement<\/a> the same day, accepting a contested view<\/a> that the two-decade-old law was \u201cinvalid.\u201d The Fifth Circuit last year declined<\/a> to block the settlement, but has not yet issued a final ruling on an appeal<\/a> filed by a group of individuals and nonprofits.<\/p>\n The two sides swapped roles this year when Mr. Paxton, who is running for Senate in Texas with Mr. Trump\u2019s endorsement, sued the federal government<\/a> in Wichita Falls in June over a 2024 Biden-era rule that allows immigration judges to suspend some deportation proceedings. America First Legal<\/a>, a group co-founded by Stephen Miller, a senior White House adviser and the architect of much of Mr. Trump\u2019s immigration policy, helped represent Texas.<\/p>\n Again, the two sides were ideologically aligned but formally on opposite sides in a lawsuit. Together, they presented an agreement that removed immigration judges\u2019 discretion to block deportations under certain circumstances. On the same day the lawsuit was filed, Judge O\u2019Connor signed off<\/a> on the settlement with a brief order.<\/p>\n \u201cDirty Pool\u201d<\/p>\n In the case of the hospital subpoena, a Rhode Island state agency filed a new suit asking the federal court in Rhode Island to halt the out-of-state demands from Texas.<\/p>\n After considering the chain of events, Judge Mary McElroy, a Federal District Court judge in Rhode Island, upbraided the Justice Department, accusing its lawyers<\/a> of a \u201ccrusade to obtain transgender children\u2019s medical records,\u201d and of fleeing her court \u201cin favor of a distant forum that D.O.J. deems friendly to its political positions.\u201d<\/p>\n During a hearing, she described the tactic of \u201cshopping\u201d the case to Texas as \u201cdirty pool\u201d and granted a motion to quash the subpoenas.<\/p>\n The Justice Department told her it had good reason to base the investigation in North Texas. In May, Judge O\u2019Connor ruled it was \u201cnecessary and prudent\u201d for Rhode Island Hospital to turn over the documents to him personally, in case the Justice Department ultimately prevails at the conclusion of the complicated litigation.<\/p>\n