“The reason he has a higher proportion of high-profile cases is because and have chosen to file there - I don’t think O’Connor is any more or less conservative than other judges in Texas. After that, the Texas Attorney General’s Office filed two federal challenges in Fort Worth, where O’Connor is one of three judges who hears cases and is currently the only active judge - meaning cases filed there are likely to fall to him as well. Then the Northern District of Texas’ chief judge, Barbara Lynn, announced that starting in December 2016 she would hear 15 percent of cases filed at the courthouse near the Oklahoma border. Texas filed five challenges to the federal government there in 20 O’Connor heard all five. O’Connor happens to have served in small judicial districts where a savvy plaintiff has a good chance of landing in his court.įor some years, O’Connor was the only district judge hearing cases in the state’s tiny Wichita Falls division. That’s especially true for a coalition of 20 states challenging a law that touches practically every person in the country - dozens of courtrooms in many of those states would have been plausible places to file the lawsuit, giving the Texas coalition many feasible options. You can’t always choose your judge, but you can often choose your courthouse. If Texas is trying to land cases before O’Connor, the state has geography on its side. Many legal experts predict it will be reversed on appeal, at least in part. O’Connor ruled the entire landmark law unconstitutional based on a December 2017 change to federal tax law that gutted one of its major provisions. Last week’s ruling on Obamacare was a particularly stunning victory for Texas. Weeks before he heard oral arguments in this Obamacare case, O’Connor had awarded Texas some $300 million in a separate lawsuit over a fee associated with the law. In December 2016, he ruled that an Obama administration rule aimed at preventing discrimination against transgender patients could force doctors to violate their religious beliefs. O’Connor has also ruled for Texas in health care cases. This October, a year after Texas filed suit, it was O’Connor who struck down the Indian Child Welfare Act, a decades-old federal law that gives Native American families placement preference over white families for adopting Native children. Since then, he’s earned a reputation as a no-nonsense conservative darling. Bush, worked in relative obscurity until 2015, when Texas’ litigation force began to frequent his courtroom. O’Connor, a 2007 appointee of President George W. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and a former federal prosecutor in North Texas who has been rumored to be on the short list for a promotion to a federal appeals court. He is one of several dozen federal judges of his rank in the state.Īctive in the conservative Federalist Society, O’Connor is a former aide to U.S. Since 2015, almost half of challenges to the federal government that Texas filed in district courts here landed in O’Connor’s courtroom, attorney general’s office records show. The North Texas judge has emerged as something of a favorite for the Texas Attorney General’s Office, a notoriously litigious legal battalion known for challenging the federal government in cases and controversies across the country. And it doesn’t seem to be a coincidence that those cases landed in his court.
Over the past four years, O’Connor has handed Texas major wins in several high-profile Texas v. District Judge Reed O’Connor struck down as unconstitutional after a Texas-led coalition of 20 states sued this year to kill it. And on Friday, it was the entirety of Obamacare that U.S. In 2016, it was an Obama administration guideline allowing transgender children to use school bathrooms that align with their gender identity.
In 2015, it was an Obama administration effort to extend family leave benefits to gay couples.
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