During former President Donald Trump’s first term, many left-wing interest groups ran to courts chock-full of leftist federal judges in, among other places, California, Hawaii, and Washington state. Because of the Senate’s “blue slip” policy — an unwritten rule that allows home-state senators to veto district court judicial nominees — there was no real doubt that these groups would draw a judge ideologically similar to them. These district court judges proceeded to issue sweeping injunction after sweeping injunction, and various Trump policies were bogged down for years as the Department of Justice appealed. These left-wing groups either stopped, or at least significantly stalled, many Trump policies.
When President Joe Biden assumed office, shrewd Republicans fired off their own litigation shots. Texas’s firebrand attorney general, Ken Paxton, has been particularly successful in procuring injunctions in certain Texas-based federal courts against Biden’s myriad overreaches. Furious, leftists are now seeking to thwart Paxton by taking away a tool he has utilized to great effect: the single-judge division.
Congress divides federal district courts by state, district, and division. For instance, the state of Illinois has three districts: the Northern, Southern and Central Districts. Within the Northern District, there are two divisions: the Western Division, based in the small city of Rockford and with only one active judge; and the much larger Eastern Division, with around two dozen active judges in Chicago. Likewise, Texas has several districts and, within each one, there are many divisions. One such division is the Amarillo Division of the Northern
