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Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, last month, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas resisted Democrats' latest attempt to intimidate the Federal judiciary.

This all started a year ago, when Senate Majority Leader Schumer sent a letter to the chief judge of the Northern District of Texas, urging him to change the ways that cases were assigned in that district. In short, the majority leader is unhappy with single-judge divisions in Texas that have handed down rulings that he doesn't agree with.

Well, forget for a moment the fact that the left has been more than happy to file lawsuits in courts they believe will be friendly to their arguments. Set that aside for a moment. But the majority leader seeks to avoid more liberal losses in the courtrooms. He wants the chief judge to ignore Federal law--literally, ignore the law--which establishes which courts have jurisdiction and venue over a given case. As Senator Schumer sees it, this change, which would create a random selection assignment system, would prevent judges who are nominated by Republican Presidents from hearing as many high-profile cases.

Well, the majority leader might be forgiven for his naivete or his misunderstanding of actually what controls what venue and what jurisdiction is under the law, but the problem is that he went a step further. He ended his letter with a clear threat. If the Northern District didn't comply with his demands, he said, ``Congress will consider more prescriptive requirements.'' In other words, he said: Do what we want, and, if you don't, we will do it for you.

Well, for some reason, the Senator from New York thinks he should be the one to decide how cases are assigned in the Northern District of Texas.

Late last month, Chief Judge David Godbey wrote the majority leader a letter reminding him of something that the leader already knew, which is that assignment of cases is not governed by politics but by existing law. A Federal statute that Congress passed, signed by a President, gives district courts the authority to decide how to assign cases for a given district.

Unsurprisingly, there is no requirement that chief judges consult with the majority leader of the Senate when deciding how to assign cases within their district. There is this thing called separation of powers that the majority leader may have overlooked or forgotten about.

As Chief Justice Godbey noted in his letter, the district judges in the Northern District of Texas met to discuss this topic and reached a consensus not to make the changes requested by Senator Schumer.

While the chief judge of the Northern District was not swayed by the majority leader's implicit threat, that wasn't the end of the story. Regrettably, the Judicial Conference of the United States, in an effort to placate the majority leader, recommended that district courts across the country randomly assign certain cases that seek to invalidate State or Federal law. In other words, now the Judicial Conference has gotten into the act, ignoring existing laws passed by Congress and signed by Presidents that establish which courts have jurisdiction and venue over a given case.

Well, that provoked another telling reaction on the part of our Democratic colleagues. The majority leader rejoiced that this guidance that he sought would prevent ``MAGA-right plaintiffs'' from being able to ``all but guarantee a handpicked MAGA-right judge.''

How insulting is that? These are life-tenured judges nominated by a President, confirmed by the U.S. Senate, and the majority leader is suggesting that a judge who has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States can be depended on to reach a predetermined result. Well, I know that is politics, but that is not the way the laws are supposed to be interpreted or applied by the courts.

Thank goodness we have an independent judiciary in this country. It is one of the things that makes us unique in the world among democracies--a truly independent judiciary that calls balls and strikes; that interprets the Constitution and laws and applies them to a given case, even when politicians get caught up with their rhetoric and their political desires.

Well, the majority whip--the chairman of the Judiciary Committee-- echoed the majority leader's position and noted that changing the way cases are assigned, he says, ``will help restore the public's trust in our court system and strengthen our democracy.''

I think what undermines the public's trust in our court system and undermines our democracy are these baseless attacks on judges, assuming that they are Republican judges or Democratic judges or MAGA-right judges--whatever that is supposed to mean. I guess that means they were appointed by President Trump, but also confirmed by the U.S. Senate. The irony of calling a Senate-confirmed Federal judge a ``MAGA judge'' in talking about the importance of public trust in the judiciary is pretty rich.

I want to commend Chief Judge Godbey and the judges of the Northern District of Texas from resisting this political pressure and commend them for doing what they know is right for their district and the people who live and litigate within that district. This was, without a doubt, the right decision for multiple reasons.

As a practical matter, the majority leader's preferred case assignment scheme would likely subject litigants to logistical nightmares. I know Texas is a lot bigger than New York. But take the Northern District of Texas, for example. It is one of the largest judicial districts in the country. It stretches over 100 out of our 254 counties and encompasses more than 96,000 acres. If the Northern District of Texas were a State, it would be the ninth largest State. If Senator Schumer had his way, a suit filed in one division could ultimately be heard by any division within the Northern District.

Someone--say a woman challenging the State's abortion laws in Fort Worth--could have to travel all the way to Lubbock for her day in court. And a company in Dallas challenging government overreach or perhaps a new environmental regulation would have to go all the way to Amarillo to have that case decided, under this random assignment system. This would obviously create a lot of burdens on litigants--my constituents, Texans, American citizens. It would create burdensome and expensive hurdles that both parties in a case would have to overcome for no real purpose.

We all know that cases decided by district judges get considered by circuit courts--appellate courts--and, potentially, even the U.S. Supreme Court. But the majority leader's political pressure on the Northern District would ultimately harm access to justice for those litigants who don't have the time or the money to travel long distances or to pay their lawyers in order to do so.

But the more fundamental issue is the constitutional one. Under the law, only Congress has the power to pass venue changes--that is where a case is heard--not the courts. The courts apply laws that the Congress passes and were signed into law by the President. The Constitution vests Congress with the sole authority to determine the structure and organization of the lower courts, and that includes venue laws, where cases are heard. From there, each individual district has the latitude to determine how cases are ultimately assigned.

So if the majority leader wants to change the way that venue laws are applied, he can try to do so, but he has to do so through a change in the law, not by trying to intimidate the judges in that division.

Over the last years, our Democratic colleagues have repeatedly launched deeply concerning attacks against America's independent judiciary. Several years ago, five of our Democratic colleagues threatened that the Supreme Court would be ``restructured'' if it failed to rule a certain way in a case related to the Second Amendment.

The following year, the majority leader, the Senator from New York, stood in front of the Supreme Court and threatened two sitting Supreme Court Justices by name if they didn't rule the way he wanted them to rule in a case involving abortion. He said:

I want to tell you Gorsuch. I want to tell you Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won't know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.

How shameful on the part of the majority leader to stand on the steps of the Supreme Court and to threaten the sitting Justices unless they ruled in a particular way.

The next year, just a few months after President Biden took office, our Democratic colleagues in both the Senate and the House introduced a bill that would allow him to pack the Supreme Court with four new liberal Justices.

A couple years later, Senator Wyden, the Senator from Oregon, advocated for the Biden administration to ignore a potential court order from a Northern District of Texas court because he didn't agree with it. He actually said that the Biden administration should ignore the ruling of a Federal judge--not appeal it; ignore it.

Then 15 of our Democratic colleagues recommended slashing the Supreme Court's budget if it failed to meet their demand to implement a new code of ethics that had our Democratic colleagues' stamp of approval.

And, more recently, some of our Democratic colleagues have called on Justice Sotomayor to retire so President Biden can install a new liberal Justice, likely to serve for many years in the future.

Democrats' attacks on our judiciary have varied, but the theme is always the same. It is all about control; it is all about politics; it is all about outcomes--not justice and the rule of law.

Their message is: Deliver the wins we want, impose a code of ethics that we wrote, and retire when we say.

Well, we all know that lifetime tenure is provided for Federal judges to provide for their independence so they can't be intimidated, so they can't be forced to retire. And we can't cut their pay for the same reason.

Forget this idea of fair and impartial courts. They want judges who fall in line, salute smartly, and follow orders. As I said earlier today, an independent judiciary is essential to our democracy and the rule of law. It is the crown jewels of our government, of our Constitution. The courts cannot and must not be subjected to pressure campaigns from anyone--politicians, political activists, or anybody else.

The Federal judiciary certainly is not subservient to Congress; it is a separate and coequal branch of the government--coequal. Our Founders deliberately designed a system of checks and balances to prevent any one branch from forcing the other two to bend to its will. But that is exactly what our Democratic colleagues are trying to do, and it is wrong. It is unconstitutional, and it must be stopped.

Today's Democratic party is trying to blur the lines between the legislative and judicial branches of our government in order to secure partisan wins. And there is a reason why their efforts haven't had much success. Their proposals are unpopular. They are unwarranted, and they are flatout unconstitutional.

I am glad the Northern District of Texas did not cave to Senator Schumer's demands or the Judicial Conference's ill-conceived guidance. Democrats have made it clear that they will do whatever it takes to secure partisan wins in the courts.

They ought to try passing laws here in Congress with open debate and opportunity for everybody to participate in the process; but the problem is, when they lose legislative battles, they simply rely on the courts to get the wins that they ultimately want.

But the American people can rest assured that Republicans will continue to defend America's independent judiciary and fight these attacks no matter what form they may take.

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