McConnell on SHOP Act: Comprehensive, Non-Partisan, Will Strengthen Confidence In Our Federal Judiciary
‘As I have said before, the problem with venue shopping is not a judge in north Texas. It’s a national problem driven by the ability of single judges everywhere to grant injunctions that are national in scope. The SHOP Act would stop that, restricting the relief that judges in Texas and in California can provide to the parties in front of them or the geographic reach of their jurisdictions.’
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) submitted the following remarks today regarding the SHOP Act. Below is the text as prepared for delivery:
“Yesterday, with my colleagues the junior Senator for Arkansas and the senior Senator for North Carolina, I was proud to introduce the SHOP Act, a comprehensive, non-partisan solution to venue shopping in federal courts.
“As I have said before, the problem with venue shopping is not a judge in north Texas. It’s a national problem driven by the ability of single judges everywhere to grant injunctions that are national in scope.
“The SHOP Act would stop that, restricting the relief that judges in Texas and in California can provide to the parties in front of them or the geographic reach of their jurisdictions.
“It also addresses the problem of venue selling in bankruptcy and patent cases. Venue abuse in those specialized areas of law comes less from litigants seeking advantage than from judges creating artificially attractive venues in order to enrich their friends in the local bar. The SHOP Act would impose uniform standards for where bankruptcy and patent cases should be heard to solve this problem.
“Lastly the SHOP Act addresses the practice of actual illicit judge shopping. Recently, the Southern Poverty Law Center and Lambda Legal engaged in this practice in Alabama, going to great and unethical lengths both to get their case steered to a particular liberal judge and to strip it from a perceived conservative.
“Importantly, when these left-wing groups were caught red-handed, it was none other than President Obama’s White House Counsel himself who appeared in court to defend them in their disciplinary case. I can’t think of a better example of the liberal attitude of ‘judge shopping for me but not for thee’.
“Well, the SHOP Act stops all of it. It applies everywhere regardless of ideology and addresses the root causes of the issue. And I invite my Democratic colleagues to join our bill and further strengthen public confidence in our federal judiciary.”
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Related Issues: Congressional Review Act, Economy
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