{"id":37,"date":"2026-05-18T19:35:49","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T19:35:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/homemovechronicle.com\/?p=37"},"modified":"2026-05-18T19:35:49","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T19:35:49","slug":"a-maga-judge-in-texas-was-called-out-by-a-colleague-for-trying-to-steal-a-case-in-rhode-island","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/homemovechronicle.com\/?p=37","title":{"rendered":"A MAGA Judge in Texas Was Called Out by a Colleague for Trying to Steal a Case in Rhode Island"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Sign up for\u00a0<\/em>Executive Dysfunction<\/em>, a newsletter that highlights one under-the-radar story each week about how Trump is changing the law\u2014or how the law is pushing back. You\u2019ll also receive updates on the latest from Slate\u2019s Jurisprudence team.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more Maybe Trump Is Giving Us the Capital City We Deserve<\/a><\/p>\n

Donald Trump\u2019s Department of Justice thinks it has found a way to deal with the many judges who refuse to tolerate its unethical behavior: forum shopping key cases to MAGA judges across the country who are much more likely to reward underhanded tactics. The administration road tested this method in immigration cases by shuttling noncitizens to Southern detention centers within the jurisdiction of far-right courts. DOJ lawyers then pulled a similar trick to enforce a subpoena against a Rhode Island hospital that provided gender-affirming care to minors\u2014only to see it blow up in their face. On Wednesday, Judge Mary S. McElroy a federal subpoena seeking medical records and personal data of these children. She castigated department attorneys over their \u201cappalling\u201d and \u201creckless disregard for the duty of candor\u201d and described them as \u201cunworthy of this trust at every point.\u201d Remarkably, McElroy also called out the ultrapartisan federal judge, Reed O\u2019Connor, who tried to enforce the illegal subpoena from his Texas courtroom.<\/p>\n

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On this week\u2019s Slate Plus bonus episode of Amicus, co-host Mark Joseph Stern spoke with Madiba Dennie\u2014deputy editor of Balls and Strikes and author of The Originalism Trap<\/em>\u2014about McElroy\u2019s incandescent takedown of the DOJ and the pliant judges bolstering its agenda. An excerpt from their conversation, below, has been edited and condensed for clarity.<\/p>\n

Mark Joseph Stern: Judge Mary McElroy did not just tell the Justice Department it had no authority to demand all this highly sensitive information based on healthcare \u201cfraud\u201d that wasn\u2019t fraud at all. She also scorched the DOJ lawyers\u2014and specifically one high-ranking official, Lisa K. Hsiao\u2014for deeply unethical behavior. She wrote that Hsiao\u2019s assertions to the court were \u201cat best, deceptive, if not intentionally and knowingly false.\u201d And she said the \u201cpresumption of regularity\u201d that the DOJ \u201ccould be taken at its word\u2014with little doubt about its intentions and stated purposes\u2014no longer holds.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Judges flaming DOJ lawyers from the bench has been a pretty steady drumbeat over the past 16 months. But it seems to me that this is something more: an epitaph for the DOJ\u2019s credibility that could have real consequences for its ability to prevail in future cases that have nothing to do with this one.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Madiba Dennie:<\/strong> I think that\u2019s right, and I\u2019m glad to see a judge saying it. The Justice Department built up this reputation over decades of extreme competency\u2014like, really qualified people who were obviously going to do the ethical thing and never lie to judges. Now we have seen Trump\u2019s DOJ break away from that repeatedly but still trying to use the benefit of the \u201cpresumption of regularity\u201d: DOJ lawyers telling courts to just assume that they\u2019re telling the truth and doing everything in good faith. Now courts are asking: Why would we do that? We can see everything else you\u2019re doing. There\u2019s no reason to take what you\u2019re saying in good faith.<\/em><\/p>\n

It is a relief to hear a judge actually acknowledge that, because it does influence how cases play out. If you interrogate the DOJ just a little bit, you realize you should not defer to or take anything it says at face value. And that can have tangible effects. One clear example is that the standard courts use when deciding whether to halt a judge\u2019s order or issue an injunction asks about the public\u2019s interest. To evaluate the public\u2019s interest, courts are supposed to look to the government\u2019s<\/em> interest. And if the government is a party to the case, then there\u2019s often an assumption that the public\u2019s interests and the government\u2019s interests are the same. Like hell they are! There is no reason to assume that when you can\u2019t trust that the government is doing what it\u2019s supposed to do.<\/p>\n

I think courage is contagious in this context too. McElroy quoted other courts who had previously said that this DOJ no longer deserves the presumption of regularity. And we heard something similar during the Immigration and Customs Enforcement crackdown in Minnesota, when there were tons of illegal arrests and detentions and all these federal judges said they just could not trust this DOJ anymore, issuing sanctions against department lawyers who broke the law. It\u2019s important to get this outrageous conduct on the record and say the judiciary should assume that these attorneys are lying until they can prove that they aren\u2019t.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Read more The Revolutionary Center: How to Revive Liberalism<\/a><\/p>\n

Which leads us to the other fascinating part of this case: I\u2019d hope any judge would feel the same way as McElroy when confronted with the administration\u2019s unlawful effort to obtain protected information about vulnerable children. Gender-affirming care, after all, is not \u201cfraud\u201d; it is expressly protected under Rhode Island law, so you might think any judge would laugh this case out of the courtroom. But what happened here is that when the Trump administration could not immediately intimidate Rhode Island Hospital into turning over this information, it ran to Texas, to the courtroom of Judge Reed O\u2019Connor, and asked him to enforce its illegal subpoena.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

For those who don\u2019t know American geography, Texas is not Rhode Island, nor is it particularly close. Yet O\u2019Connor gave the administration everything it wanted. He almost immediately issued an order to enforce the subpoena before even giving the hospital a chance to respond. And McElroy called this out in her opinion. She laid out how O\u2019Connor played along with this flagrant judge shopping\u2014she actually quoted a past speech in which he defended judge shopping. And she wrote that \u201cit is clear\u201d that that was what happened here.<\/strong><\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the jujitsu move: McElroy then neutralized O\u2019Connor\u2019s order to enforce the subpoena by nullifying the subpoena itself, because the DOJ had failed to identify any possible law-breaking by the hospital. Basically, she said: Judge O\u2019Connor, you think you can mess with a case in my state? You think you can order a Rhode Island hospital to comply with a subpoena from your court in Texas? Well, I\u2019m going to quash the entire subpoena, so good luck enforcing something that doesn\u2019t legally exist.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s great because she\u2019s not overriding another judge\u2019s order. There\u2019s no actual conflict here. What she\u2019s targeting is the lawless underlying subpoena, saying it was unenforceable to begin with. She told O\u2019Connor: I\u2019m not saying your enforcement order was <\/em>wrong. I\u2019m just saying this can\u2019t be enforced.<\/em> Which is true, and any non-MAGA-pilled judge would\u2019ve picked up on it. It\u2019s absurd to ask for an obscene amount of information about these kids\u2014this subpoena was clearly about harassing them and trying to stop them from getting the healthcare they need.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Connor is, indeed, <\/strong>one of the<\/strong>most notoriously<\/strong>partisan judges<\/strong>on the bench<\/strong>. MAGA-pilled<\/em> is exactly right. He loves having Republican cases shopped to his courtroom. Do you think it matters that McElroy is calling him out and saying, actually, that this is her case? There\u2019s so much decorum among judges, this infamous brotherhood of the robe, that keeps them from directly criticizing one another. But McElroy is pretty shady toward O\u2019Connor. And it seems important to have one judge say this about an out-of-control colleague who\u2019s seizing cases from a thousand miles away.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It definitely stands out, because judges do this only when they\u2019re very distressed. This is not typical behavior. I\u2019m also thinking about how the Judicial Conference tried to do something about judge shopping once, and the judges who love being shopped to got upset and stopped it. I wonder if we\u2019ll finally see some movement to rein in judge shopping if judges actively call out this behavior in their opinions. Having judges acknowledging this outright\u2014by publicly criticizing their colleagues for going along with it\u2014seems like a requisite for doing something about it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more Trump\u2019s New Grift Is His Most Brazen \u2026 Ever?<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Wednesday, Judge Mary S. McElroy shot down a federal subpoena seeking medical records and personal data of children.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[10,18,11,53],"class_list":["post-37","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-jurisprudence","tag-donald-trump","tag-judiciary","tag-jurisprudence","tag-lgbtq"],"yoast_head":"\nA MAGA Judge in Texas Was Called Out by a Colleague for Trying to Steal a Case in Rhode Island - Home Move Chronicle<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/homemovechronicle.com\/?p=37\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A MAGA Judge in Texas Was Called Out by a Colleague for Trying to Steal a Case in Rhode Island - Home Move Chronicle\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"On Wednesday, Judge Mary S. 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