Abdul Fatawu Abdul Karim
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Why Texas judges have so much power right now.
It seems like there's a concerning issue in Texas called "judge shopping," where litigants can pick their preferred judge for their cases. This practice has allowed Texas to file multiple lawsuits against the federal government and influence national laws. The situation becomes complicated because some Texas districts have fewer active judges, making it easier for litigants to choose a specific judge. Additionally, Texas is part of the Fifth Circuit Court, which has a majority of judges appointed by Republican presidents and tends to lean conservative. While some solutions like changing district court rules or passing a law in Congress have been proposed, the issue remains unresolved for now. Since 2021, there have been 31 separate lawsuits, in federal district courthouses all over the state, in which Texas has sued the federal government. Let's look at just one, in Amarillo, about immigration. The judge in this case - there was no jury - ruled that the Biden administration had to continue a Trump policy called "Remain in Mexico" that keeps asylum seekers out of the country. The Biden administration eventually got that decision reversed, but it took almost a whole year. And as they waited for the Supreme Court to do that, they also had to obey the decision and keep asylum seekers out of the country. All because of this one judge's ruling. And in fact, the Texas Attorney General's office, which filed the case, had sought this judge out specifically. And over the next two years, they would bring him cases against the federal government again, and again, and again. And he's not alone. Texas has gone back to this judge again and again too. You're not supposed to be able to pick which judge hears your case. But in Texas, you can. It's called "judge shopping." It's only possible in a place like Texas. And it's helped make Texas into a powerful weapon for changing how things work everywhere in the country. Each state in the US has at least one federal district court. Texas has four. They're the bottom level of the federal court system. Federal courts mostly hear cases involving national laws. And federal judges are appointed by the president. There are over 600 district judges across all of these courts. So several judges in each court. And usually the judge who hears your case is chosen randomly. STEVE VLADECK: Randomness is a critical principle because the idea is that the judicial system is supposed to be, on the whole, a neutral arbiter of legal disputes. But the US is big. There are a lot of big states. And even when a state has multiple federal court districts, some of those districts are still really big. Like this one, the Northern District of Texas. If you're in Lubbock, and your case gets randomly assigned to a judge in Dallas, that's a five-hour drive to get to court. So partly to solve for that, many districts are further subdivided into multiple divisions, and each usually has its own courthouse. But different districts have different rules for which case goes to which division. For example, over in the Central District of California, there are three divisions, with clear rules meant to make sure that cases stay local. But in the Northern District of Texas, those rules aren't so strict. It's much easier to file a case in whatever division you choose. Same with the other Texas districts. Here's where that becomes a problem. The Southern District of Texas has 28 judges for seven divisions. But for most of the last two years, two of those divisions have had just one active judge each. Here in the Victoria Division, that's been judge Drew Tipton. And in the Galveston Division, it's Judge Jeffrey Brown. And this happens all over the state. In the Northern District, this judge, Matthew Kacsmaryk, is the only judge in the Amarillo division. And Judge Reed O'Connor is the only one for the Wichita Falls Division. And that means that if you choose to file your lawsuit in one of those places, you know who the judge will be. So you get a situation where, over two years, the Texas attorney general files eight separate lawsuits against the Biden administration in Victoria, because they knew Judge Tipton would hear them. Cases about the border wall, the minimum wage, gun laws... VLADECK: Judge Tipton had sided with the state of Texas, had embraced a pretty broad view of why Texas could sue in the first place, and had issued nationwide injunctions barring the Biden administration from carrying out its policies. So, yeah, I mean, I don't think there was much of a mystery about why they would choose Judge Tipton. The second thing that makes Texas unique is where it sits in this chart. If the losing side of a district judge's decision appeals, it goes up to one of the 12 Appeals Courts, also called the circuit courts. A decision appealed from there goes up to the Supreme Court. And all Texas district courts report up to the Fifth Circuit Court, which, with a big majority of judges appointed by Republican presidents, is the most notoriously conservative of all the circuit courts, and broadly speaking, very likely to agree with even the most conservative rulings. We saw this when a private group filed a lawsuit in Amarillo seeking to ban abortion pills that had been legal for 20 years. In April 2023, Judge Kacsmaryk sided with the private group, saying the US Food and Drug Administration had to roll back its approval of mifepristone for the whole country. The Fifth Circuit Court largely agreed, and the case made it to the Supreme Court -- which then, actually paused that decision. VLADECK: But, you know, at multiple points we were hours away from this really shockingly broad and remarkable ruling, that would have dramatically restricted access to mifepristone on a nationwide basis, going into effect. And so, you know, I think the notion that like, hey, we walked up to the cliff but didn't fall in, doesn't mean everything's okay. But while the Supreme Court moved quickly to pause the mifepristone decision, often it actually just sits on cases for months before it hears them, effectively allowing the lower court judge's decision to dictate federal law during that time. Like in 2022, when Judge Tipton ruled that Biden couldn't reprioritize which undocumented immigrants to deport first. Almost a year later, we're still waiting for the Supreme Court to rule on that. And Tipton's ruling is still in effect. VLADECK: Any good lawyer is going to try to maximize the chances that their client's going to win. What's different about what's been happening lately is actually trying to stack the deck so that you're guaranteed of a specific outcome. Judge shopping the way we see it today is a relatively new phenomenon. So - how do we fix it? Well, the district courts themselves could decide to do things differently. In February, the Southern District of Texas changed Victoria's single-judge status. It now has two active judges. And since these are federal courts, Congress could also pass a law regulating the way cases are distributed. There's a bill in Congress right now that would redirect any lawsuit that wants to block a federal policy to the courts in Washington, DC. Or the Supreme Court could write new rules for the lower courts. But until then, anyone who wants a good shot at getting a case before the Supreme Court knows that in Texas district courts, you can pick your judge.
By Abdul Fatawu Abdul Karim2 years ago in Writers
Myopia on the Rise
At some point growing up, my vision changed. And slowly I stopped being able to see past about... this far in front of my face. Basically, anything past... like 10 inches in front of my eyes... is blurry. So eventually I got glasses and with them my world turns from this... to this. This whole experience as inconvenient as it is... is more widespread than it's ever been. [overlapping] “-Myopia.” “-Myopia.” [overlapping] “- Myopia, am I saying it right?” “-A rise in short-sightedness...” “...and the researchers actually called it an epidemic...” “...but they're still trying to figure out why this is...” Rates of myopia or near-sightedness or needing glasses to see things far away... have been rising for decades. In the US, where I live just 25% of people were myopic in 1971. By 2004, that number was up to 42%. And if current trends continue it’s estimated that half of the world's population will be myopic by 2050. In Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea rates are already a lot higher than that. And a growing portion have high myopia which the WHO categorizes as a prescription stronger than -5. That puts them at risk of losing their sight one day. For decades, researchers thought that whether or not you needed glasses was just a matter of genetics. And it partly is. Having one myopic parent doubles your odds of being nearsighted and having 2 increases the odds 5 fold. But human genetics don't change this fast. The abruptness of this increase suggests that that this change is environmental. Something about the way we live today is making it harder and harder for people to see at a distance. So what could it be? Most people are born with eyes that are too short from front to back. In this shape, the lens focuses images behind the retina. That's the light sensitive tissue at the back of the eye. That makes the eye hyperopic or farsighted. Blurry up close and clear from far away. But as we grow up, our eyes grow too. Until they reach a spherical shape. In this shape, the lens focuses light directly onto the retina and produces a clear image. But sometimes the eye keeps growing longer. In this shape, the lens can focus up close images onto the retina. But at a distance, images focus at a point in front of the retina... making distance vision blurry. So all of us with myopia just have eyeballs that have grown too long. The eye does not look like a basketball anymore. It looks more like a rugby ball. That's Seang Mei Saw. She's a myopia epidemiologist and physician in Singapore. It is a lifelong disease so once you're myopic, it doesn't regress. So what's making more and more people’s eyes grow longer than they should? The evidence points to the way we spend time in childhood and adolescence. That's when our eyes grow fastest. So it's when most people's myopia develops and then stabilizes. Though it can develop later if you abuse your vision enough. Two factors in particular have the biggest influence. Near work or the time that we spend looking at things up close... and how much time we spend indoors. In a healthy eye, muscles have to squeeze the lens in order to focus up close images onto the retina. So some experts theorize that if your eyes grow up straining to look at things up close a lot of the time, they'll just grow longer to reduce that strain. But the evidence on this explanation is mixed. The stronger explanation is time spent indoors. Exposure to bright outdoor light stimulates the production of dopamine in the retina. This neurotransmitter regulates the eyes growth... without enough dopamine the eye doesn't know when to stop growing and indoors it's hard to get enough. The light from the sun has up to a 100,000 lux on a sunny day. Whereas in the room the light levels generally and only about 200 to 300 lux. But between electronic devices and early emphasis on academics... eye experts believe that children today are growing up with a combination of too little daylight and too much time doing things up close. And nowhere is that more apparent than in East and Southeast Asia. Children in Asia are not spending that amount of time outside. This could possibly be because of the education system has become much more competitive. The children have a lot more work. They attend teaching centers and you spend more time reading and writing. Needing glasses or contacts to see for the rest of your life is obviously inconvenient. But in the long term the consequences of that distorted eyeball shape can become serious. University of Houston Professor of Optometry Mark Bullimore, explained this to me. You know, you're born with a finite amount of tissue that make up the various coats of your eyeball. Excessive elongation of that quite simply places additional stress on those structures. The retina has been stretched so much that starts to break and then sort of peel off like an old piece of paint. The longer those eye structures are stretched the higher the risk of disorders like myopic macular degeneration, retinal detachment... glaucoma and cataracts. So we're finding this almost linear relationship between them. The amount of myopia and the risks to your vision... later in life. We used to think about myopia as an optical defect. Now we think about it much more as a disease. And the earlier a child becomes myopic the more serious their myopia can become and the greater the risk of debilitating conditions. Which means it's important to intervene as early as possible. So, what does that look like? For those who start to develop myopia there's treatment. First are multifocal, soft contacts, and glasses. They make peripheral vision intentionally blurry which appears to slow the progression of myopia. Then there's orthokeratology or ortho-k lenses... hard contact lenses worn only at night that reshape the wearer's cornea while they sleep... so that they can see at a distance during the day. And there are atropine eye drops low doses of a substance that temporarily paralyzes the eyes’ focusing muscles which seems to reduce the development of myopia. But the first line of defense is prevention. The simplest and most effective way to prevent myopia is to get kids to spend more time outside. In Taiwan, the government introduced a nationwide program in 2010, encouraging schools to get students outside for 2 hours every day. It appears to have successfully reversed a 40 year-long increase in myopia rates. And since 2001 Singapore has funded public education promoting time outdoors... and conducted annual vision screenings at schools. And it seems to be working. Right now, these rates may be higher than ever but the future of myopia will only look like this if we keep doing things the same way. And we've never been in a better position to change.
By Abdul Fatawu Abdul Karim2 years ago in Education
