Meet Judges in Amarillo, Center of FDA Abortion Drug Cases

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When anti-abortion groups tried to challenge the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of abortion-inducing drugs, they filed lawsuits in Maryland, where the FDA is headquartered, and in states where the pill is still legally prescribed. did not.

They filed it in Amarillo, a city in Texas that didn’t have an abortion clinic even before the state nearly banned the procedure.

But Amarillo has a federal court and, importantly, only one federal judge.U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kaxmalik’s Trial 95% of cases Submitted to Amarillo.

Before being appointed to the federal court by President Donald Trump in 2019, Kacsmaryk was a deputy attorney at the First Liberty Institute, a highly conservative religious freedom law firm based in Plano.

Under his leadership, First Liberty has been involved in several legal battles over reproductive health care, including an attempt to block “contraceptive orders” that require health insurance companies to pay for contraception. Kacsmaryk himself Frank I am against LGBTQ rights.

Since Kacsmaryk joined the bench, Texas Attorneys General and private litigants have brought their most contentious cases to Amarillo, with largely favorable results.he Reviving Trump-era ‘Stay in Mexico’ policies that represent Texas.he smashed the effort From the Biden administration to protect LGBTQ workers and transgender youth. And he said a long-standing federal program to give teens confidential birth control violated state law.

The Hippocratic Medical Alliance, an anti-abortion group challenging FDA approval of mifepristone, is based in Tennessee. But the group set up the Amarillo outpost in August 2022, three months before he filed the lawsuit, records from the Texas Secretary of State’s office show. One of his plaintiffs, a doctor from Dumas, north of Amarillo, claims he and his patients were harmed by the approval of the drug by the FDA.

religious freedom background

After attending Abilene Christian University and the University of Texas School of Law, Kacsmaryk went into private practice with Baker Botts, where he served as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District.

In 2014, he joined First Liberty Institute as Deputy General Counsel. first freedom, formerly the Liberty Institute, is a religious freedom legal group based in Plano. The attorney has filed several lawsuits in the U.S. Supreme Court, including a case in which the High Court found that a school district discriminated against a football coach who prayed on the sidelines after a game.

In First Liberty, Kacsmaryk challenged the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that health insurance plans cover contraception and emergency contraception such as the morning after pill. In its lawsuit, First Liberty argued that the provision of these drugs, which it claimed would induce abortions, violated plaintiffs’ good faith held religious beliefs.

First Liberty settled the lawsuit in 2017 after the Trump administration amended requirements to exempt people with “conscientious objections” from providing contraception.

“Our client has been suing since 2013 against government efforts to punish business owners and ministry leaders for following their religious and moral beliefs,” said Kacsmaryk. said in a statement at the time. “As President Trump has recognized … it is time to reaffirm America’s leadership role as a nation that protects the religious liberty of all.”

In 2015, when the U.S. Supreme Court was considering whether states should allow and recognize same-sex marriage, Kacsmaryk wrote an essay in the National Catholic Register:Abolition of men and womenHe argued that “sexual revolutionaries” had desecrated marriage by allowing no-fault divorce, decriminalizing adultery, and legalizing contraception and abortion.

If the Supreme Court withdraws the “last pillar of the Marriage Act” – which is between men and women – there will be a conflict between religious beliefs that see gender as a dichotomy and the gender-believing LGBTQ community. will lead to a “clash of absolutism” in In the words of Kacsmaryk, “Humans are like pluripotent cells whose sex and sexuality are subject to autonomous self-definition.”

In 2016, Kacsmaryk advised parents who successfully challenged the Fort Worth Independent School District’s new policy allowing students to use toilets and pronouns according to their gender identity.

“This is not diversity, it is exclusion, a sexually revolutionary human race without consideration for religious opponents who may have different views of men and women and men and women. It’s about imposing an absolutist point of view.” Kacsmaryk told The Daily Signal.

Kacsmaryk has volunteered for many conservative candidates in Texas, including Governor Greg Abbott, Senator Ted Cruz, and Rep. John Cornyn. He also founded the Fort Worth Chapter of the Federalist Society. The Federalist Association is a conservative legal organization that played a huge role in choosing judicial candidates during the Trump administration.

Many of Kacsmaryk’s anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ stances were raised during his judicial nomination process. Selection subject LGBTQ advocacy group opposed his nomination. “It’s really hard to imagine someone who doesn’t deserve to sit on the federal bench,” said Oregon Democrat Senator Jeff Markley.

“All Americans deserve a judge on the bench who defends their constitutional rights, not one who tries to strip them of their constitutional rights.” Markley said in 2019:

Kacsmaryk’s former First Liberty colleague Jeff Mateer lost his shot in federal court after his comments called Transgender children are part of ‘Satan’s plan’ became clear.

However, Kaksmalik Confirmed, in a 52-46 vote, began his tenure in June 2019. At a Senate hearing, he swore to be fair.

“As a judge, I no longer play the role of advocate,” he said. “I have a role to play in good faith, reading what Supreme Court and Fifth Circuit precedents are binding.”

Why So Many Cases End In Amarillo

It’s no coincidence that this decidedly conservative judge ended up hearing controversial cases brought by right-wing law firms, private litigants, and the state of Texas.

It is very common for lawyers to file cases in districts where they are most likely to win. But the design of Texas’ federal justice system is all about facilitating “judges,” except for ensuring that a particular judge hears a case, says a constitutional law professor at the University of Texas at Austin. As one Steve Vladek said:

Texas has four federal district courts, which are further divided into 27 divisions. Each district court sets its own rules for how cases are divided, but usually cases are randomly assigned to judges within each division. For example, in Houston, seven standing judges and his five senior judges divide cases, and these judges are reducing the number of cases. But outside the state’s urban centers, there are few judges to share the load.

“Not outrageously, purely for historical and geographic reasons, Texas has long had one judge per division in remote parts of the state.” said Vladeck.

Texas has nine divisions with one judge and ten divisions with only two judges. The ones staffed only by Trump appointees have been busy lately. Of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s 26 complaints against the Biden administration, seven went to Kaksmalik, and another seven went to U.S. District Judge Drew Tipton in Victoria.

Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law Houston, said judge shopping is not new, citing examples dating back to the civil rights movement.

“Lawyers have a duty to file cases in the district where they are most helpful. [their] client,” he said. “If Planned Parenthood files a lawsuit in her Judge Kacsmaryk court, it will be malpractice. You choose the forum that works best for you.”

The US Department of Justice recently filed a motion to remove the case from the Kacsmaryk and Tipton courts in an attempt to curb this practice.

“This incident did not result from any event or omission that occurred in the Northern District of Texas, much less in the Amarillo District.” Movement before Kacsmaryk read“Forum Shop’s decision to have plaintiffs take action to the Northern District, and in particular to the single-judge Amarillo Division, which has nothing to do with this dispute, undermines public confidence in the administration of justice.”

Neither judge is likely to rule excluding the case from his court. But these filings could pose problems for those who could change the rules, Vladek said. rice field. The chief judge of each district can redistribute cases, and Congress can enact more uniform rules across the board.

Meanwhile, the primary vehicle for challenging Texas District Court decisions is the New Orleans-based US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which is also known to be conservative. Only a minority of cases end up in the U.S. Supreme Court.

“The Texas District Court has lost the Supreme Court case,” Vladek said. “But by the time it happened, they had avoided it for two years, so no one noticed.

Disclosure: Planned Parenthood, the Texas Secretary of State, and the University of Texas at Austin are financially responsible for The Texas Tribune, a non-profit, bipartisan news organization funded in part by donations from its members, foundations and corporate sponsors. supporter. Financial backers play no part in Tribune journalism.find the perfect here is a list of them.