Last month, I wrote a post titled “Austin Judge Buys Case by ‘Consent’.” The regional magistrate’s court hears the case.
I wrote:
In Texas, Judge Ezra is known to love high-profile cases and consistently takes them. According to my statistics, in the past year, he has presided over the “Buoy Case”, “SB 4 Case”, and “Pornography Age Verification Case”. All three cases have been or will soon be added to the Supreme Court docket. Most federal district court judges go their entire careers without a single case reaching the Supreme Court. But Ezra gave birth to three in one year. Is this a coincidence? No. Judge Pittman presented the cases to him and he accepted them.
Note that Judge Ezra is actually a visiting judge from the District of Hawaii, or what Attorney General Sessions calls a “judge sitting on a Pacific island.” Ezra was allowed to serve in the Western District of Texas to help deal with some of the backlog, such as immigration cases or criminal sentencing.
I got an email out of the blue from Judge Ezra. He wrote:
First, while it is technically correct that Austin has three senior judges, in reality, Judge Sparks is currently in inactive senior status and Judge Nowlin has a significantly reduced caseload. So, actually, the bulk of the Austin case is currently being handled by Judge Pittman and myself. You are correct in saying that Judge Pittman controls the Austin docket, however, when he is absent or recused, in most cases those cases are assigned to me. That’s how the Buoy case and the SB 4 case came into my docket. I didn’t look for those cases. Judge Pittman will tell you that I have never asked for any particular case to be assigned to my docket, and the same goes for my San Antonio docket.
As for my judgeship in the Western District, I was not appointed in 2013 to any particular case or any class of cases, including immigration cases. The federal courts at the border were and are inundated, and I decided to be of the utmost assistance in handling civil cases, many of which were long and complex. This is especially true in the Austin Division. This allows Judge Pittman to handle not only civil cases, but also time-sensitive criminal cases. The situation in Austin became even more serious when another active judge in Austin, Lee Yeakel, retired last year and entered private practice.
Finally, I can assure you that anyone who actually knows Judge Pittman or any other judge in the Western District who has the ability to assign cases to me will tell you that I do not look for “big” cases. Judge Pittman assigned cases to me in batches and I didn’t even know the names of the cases until they were transferred to my docket. I also don’t shy away from a case because it may be difficult. By the way, since you mentioned that Chief Justice Moses was appointed by President Bush, you must also know that I was appointed by President Reagan, but those two facts are not important to the way we govern.
I asked Judge Ezra if I could quote his response on his blog, and he replied:
… [G]Generally, when a federal judge corresponds privately with a law professor, it is considered private. This allows them to have an open, full dialogue without the judge feeling constrained by fear that his or her comments will be made public. That said, I’m really not worried about you quoting my email in this case. Everything I say there is absolutely true and does not interfere with my views on politics in any way.
I did respond to Judge Ezra based on some of his recent remarks at the Federal Bar Association conference in Austin, but that will have to wait until another time. The Supreme Court docket still holds me hostage. But for the sake of completeness, I want to share the judge’s comments.
