WASHINGTON (AP) — A Texas judge who sparked a legal firestorm with an unprecedented ruling halting approval of the nation’s most common method of abortion is a…
A Texas judge who sparked a legal firestorm with an unprecedented ruling halting approval of the nation’s most common method of abortion is a former attorney for a religious liberty legal group with a long history pushing conservative causes.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, on Friday ordered a hold on federal approval of mifepristone in a decision that overruled decades of scientific approval. His ruling, which doesn’t take immediate effect, came practically at the same time that U.S. District Judge Thomas O. Rice, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, essentially ordered the opposite in a different case in Washington. The split likely puts the issue on an accelerated path to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Kacsmaryk, a former federal prosecutor and lawyer for the conservative First Liberty Institute, was confirmed in 2019 over fierce opposition by Democrats over his record opposing LGBTQ rights. He was among more than 230 judges installed to the federal bench under Trump as part of a movement by the Republican president and Senate conservatives to shift the American judiciary to the right.
He’s the sole district court judge in Amarillo — a city in the Texas panhandle — ensuring that all cases filed there land in front of him. And since taking the bench, he has ruled against the Biden administration on several other issues, including immigration and LGBTQ protections.
Interest groups of all kinds have long attempted to file lawsuits before judges they see as friendly to their points of view. But the number of conservative lawsuits filed in Amarillo has spawned accusations of “judge shopping” or that right-wing plaintiffs are seeking out Kacsmaryk because they know they’ll get a sympathetic ear.
“Why are all these cases being brought in Amarillo if the litigants who are bringing them are so confident in the strength of their claims? It’s not because Amarillo is convenient to get to,” said University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck. “I think it ought to alarm the judges themselves, that litigants are so transparently and shamelessly funneling cases to their courtroom.”
The Justice Department quickly appealed Kacsmaryk’s decision to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. And for now, the drug that the Food and Drug Administration approved in 2000 appeared to remain immediately available in the wake of the conflicting rulings in Texas and Washington.
Mifepristone blocks the hormone progesterone in the body and is used with the drug misoprostol to end pregnancy within the first 10 weeks. The lawsuit in the Texas case was filed by the Alliance Defending Freedom, which was also involved in the Mississippi case that led to Roe v.
