CORRECTED-Massachusetts federal court curbs 'judge shopping' as Trump lawsuits mount

Corrects which judge is in Worcester in paragraph 8

By Nate Raymond

BOSTON, Feb 12 (Reuters) - A federal court in Massachusetts that has become a popular destination for lawsuits challenging U.S. President Donald Trump's second-term agenda has moved to prevent litigants from engaging in "judge shopping" by suing in two of its courthouses that each only have one judge.

Boston-based Chief U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor issued an order late Tuesday requiring that new cases filed in courthouses in Springfield and Worcester seeking to block a federal law or policy nationally must be randomly assigned a judge throughout the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

The change appeared to implement a policy the U.S. Judicial Conference, the judiciary's top policymaking body, announced in March 2024 aimed at deterring litigants from steering cases challenging government policies to sympathetic judges in small courthouses.

The Massachusetts court made the change amid an avalanche of lawsuits there and elsewhere challenging the Republican president's push to crack down on immigration, curb government spending and shrink the size of the federal workforce.

At the urging of Democratic-led states, unions and others, Massachusetts judges have already issued rulings temporarily blocking the Trump administration from implementing its government employee buyout program, slashing research funding and transferring a transgender woman to a men's prison.

All of those rulings were issued by judges in the district's largest courthouse in Boston, where nine of the 11 active judges were appointed by Democratic presidents. At least seven cases over Trump's policies are pending in the Boston court.

Any appeals would be heard by the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the only of the 12 regional federal appeals court to have only Democratic appointees serving as active judges.

Tuesday's order from Saylor would restrict anyone seeking a nationwide injunction from strategically filing federal cases in Massachusetts' two single-judge courthouses, or divisions, where the only two active jurists, U.S. District Judges Mark Mastroianni and Margaret Guzman, are Democratic appointees.

Saylor's order mirrored the Judicial Conference's guidance from March, which encouraged the random, districtwide assignment of cases opposing federal or state laws or policies.

Democratic lawmakers and others had pushed for that change in response to conservative litigants during Democratic former President Joe Biden's tenure suing in small courthouses in Texas whose one or two judges were appointed by Republican presidents and often ruled in their favor.

However, following blowback from Senate Republicans and some conservative judges, judicial policymakers later clarified that the policy was discretionary and up to district courts to decide whether to adopt.

The judiciary has said that as of October, six districts had adopted the policy nationally, while many with single-judge divisions had not, including in Texas.

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