Last month, I wrote a post titled "Austin Judges Shop For Cases With "Mutual Consent." I discussed at some length Judge David Ezra of the U.S. District Court for the District of Hawaii, who hears cases in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas by "mutual consent."
I wrote:
It is well known in Texas that Judge Ezra fancies the high-profile cases, and consistently receives them. By my count, in the past year, he has presided over the buoys case, the S.B. 4 case, and the porn age verification case. All three of these cases have already been on, or will soon be, on the Supreme Court's docket. Most federal district court judges can go their entire careers without having a single case make it to the Supreme Court. But Ezra has three in a year. Is this a coincidence? No. Ezra could only have received these cases by his "mutual consent." Judge Pitman offered these cases to him, and he accepted them.
Mind you that Judge Ezra is actually a visiting judge from the District of Hawaii, or what Attorney General Sessions called a "judge sitting on an island in the Pacific." To the extent that Ezra was approved to sit in the Western District of Texas, it was to help with some dockets that are backlogged, such as immigration cases or criminal sentencing.
