By Nate Raymond
(Reuters) - The U.S. federal judiciary on Tuesday adopted a new policy aimed at curtailing "judge shopping" by state attorneys general and activists who file lawsuits challenging government policies in courthouses where a single, sympathetic judge hears most cases.
The U.S. Judicial Conference, the judiciary's policymaking body, at a meeting in Washington, D.C., approved a policy that would require lawsuits seeking to block state or federal laws to be assigned a judge randomly throughout a federal district.
The policy change followed calls by President Joe Biden's administration, Democratic lawmakers, and the American Bar Association for the judiciary to eliminate case assignment mechanisms that allow litigants to effectively choose judges in cases challenging government policies.
Those proposals came in response to lawsuits filed in so-called single-judge divisions in Texas by conservative activists and Republican state attorneys general challenging government policies.
That tactic gained national attention after conservative litigants filed a lawsuit before U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in the single-judge division of Amarillo, Texas, seeking to suspend approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, which he ordered in April.
Kacsmaryk, an appointee of former Republican President Donald Trump, was previously a conservative Christian legal activist involved in anti-abortion causes.
The U.S. Supreme Court has allowed the pill to remain on the market while it considers the case.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by David Gregorio)
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