The onslaught of legal challenges to President Donald Trump’s early actions brought by federal workers and advocacy groups have found their way into mostly friendly courts, overseen, for the most part, by sympathetic judges.
These plaintiffs have employed a well-known, pervasive strategy used by both sides of the political aisle, known as forum or “judge shopping”– that is, to have a case tried in a certain district court, and one that falls under the jurisdiction of a U.S. appeals court with a certain political makeup.
This strategy serves a distinct legal purpose. While the Supreme Court is the nation’s highest court, most cases don’t make it there. That’s because the Supreme Court hears an average of less than 100 cases annually, according to federal judiciary data. In contrast, the 13 U.S. appeals courts handle an average of more than 50,000 cases per year – meaning that these courts often get to rule on the most pressing legal issues.
HERE’S WHY DOZENS OF LAWSUITS SEEKING TO QUASH TRUMP’S EARLY ACTIONS AS PRESIDENT ARE FAILING
The Supreme Court hears an average of less than 100 cases each year. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)
And while plaintiffs suing the federal government used to have to establish a local, geographic connection to the district where they were filing their lawsuit, Congress broadly moved to lift that requirement more than 30 years ago – allowing the practice to quickly gain prominence.
As president, Trump “is exercising Article II power to take care that our federal laws are faithfully executed,” Mike Davis, the founder and president of the Article III Project, or A3P, told Fox News Digital in an interview.
“That’s his constitutional duty. And that includes weeding out waste, fraud and abuse. That’s what he’s doing with Elon Musk and with DOGE,” said Davis, a former Supreme Court clerk for Justice Neil Gorsuch.
But recent years have seen a wave of new efforts to reform the system and stop the process of “judge shopping,” with…
