Sen. Chuck Schumer’s complaint about courts is so bad, he makes Ken Paxton look good | Opinion
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has been responsible for some terrible policies in his decades in Congress, but nothing like a recent complaint he lodges about federal courts.
It’s so bad, Schumer is actually going to make me defend suspended Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Schumer, a New York Democrat, and several colleagues recently wrote a whining letter to the top judge on a committee that advises the judiciary on rules for civil cases. They lament that some federal-court districts don’t assign cases randomly enough, allowing lawsuit filers to “judge shop” for a jurist likely to be friendly to their cause. Schumer cites that the 31 lawsuits Paxton’s office has brought against the Biden administration (so far), have been filed outside of Austin, where the AG is headquartered.
Judicial fairness is an important issue, but Schumer, as usual, is sticking his nose in the wrong place. The problem isn’t that someone suing looks for a sympathetic judge. That’s been happening for approximately forever. It’s that district judges, the first step in the federal judicial process, have accumulated the extraordinary power to shut down broad policies through nationwide injunctions.
Schumer is all torn up about that now that it’s Texas taking on Biden policies. But he didn’t seem too concerned when, during the Trump administration, one jurist in Hawaii became the all-powerful decider of the nation’s immigration policies.
The problem didn’t emerge there, of course. It’s been building for years, but Trump opponents took it to a new level, getting judges to shut down nearly 40 policies in a little over two and a half years. It should have surprised no one when conservative groups and state AGs saw an effective tool and used it the same way.
This kind of hypocrisy is rife in our politics. The parties switch positions based on who’s in power, such as on the national-debt ceiling. For Democrats, when their party holds the presidency, there’s no higher duty than to vote to extend America’s credit line. But when it’s a Republican in the Oval Office, suddenly Democrats have grave concerns.
Republicans do the exact same thing, of course, on that and other issues — particularly federal spending, where they’ve destroyed their credibility by swallowing huge increases under GOP presidents and suddenly becoming tightwads under Democratic control.
But on issues of executive power, Democrats throw a fit when a Democratic president is reined in, such as the Supreme Court’s rebuke to President Joe Biden’s attempt to cancel student debt without congressional approval. Then they act shocked and horrified when Republicans try the same thing.
It’s especially cheeky for Schumer to sound serious notes of concern about alleged conservative interference in judicial operations while using the pressure of his high office to seek a change in how certain courts work. But if he were capable of shame or self-reflection, would he be Senate majority leader?
Congress can dictate certain changes by writing laws. Schumer’s Democrats took control of the House and Senate in early 2019. Remember their sweeping judicial reform bills? Of course not, because they were pleased that the courts consistently blocked Trump on issues such as banning certain immigrants from the country.
Schumer is also the guy who spoke in dark tones about conservative Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh if they issued an abortion decision Democrats didn’t like. He warned: “You will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you.”
It wasn’t long after that an armed man was found on Kavanaugh’s property and announced his intent to murder the justice over abortion policy. So please, Senator, spare us the lecture about the importance of an independent judiciary.
Paxton and his staff have taken advantage of an available maneuver to increase their likelihood of winning suits over the border and other policies. If Congress wants to prevent it, fine, but make the rules apply the same to both sides.
Until just the last few years, Democrats have loved for federal judges to have sweeping power. They used, fairly and effectively, the courts to advance policy positions for which they could not win enough popular support.
Conservatives spent decades building a legal movement to do the same. Schumer and his cohort apparently never stopped to think: What if this handy tool we love so much was available to someone as ruthless (or shameless, whichever you like) as Ken Paxton?
