A Texas judge hearing a case that could jeopardize access to the country’s most common method of abortion is a former attorney for a Christian legal group who critics say is wanted by conservative litigants because they believe they’ll get sympathy for their cause.

U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, considering a lawsuit to stop the nationwide use of the drug mifepristone, who was appointed by President Trump and confirmed in 2019 due to fierce opposition from Democrats over his history opposing LGBTQ rights. Mifepristone blocks the hormone progesterone in the body and is used together with the drug misoprostol to terminate pregnancy within the first 10 weeks.

Kacsmaryk heard arguments in the case Wednesday, days after he took the unusual step of telling lawyers at a status conference not to publicize the hearing because the case has sparked death threats and protests and he believed less advertising for this hearing is better .”

Kacsmaryk said he would rule as soon as possible.”

The judge, a former federal prosecutor and attorney for the conservative First Liberty Institute, has spoken out against the Biden administration on other issues, including immigration. He was one of more than 230 justices installed on the federal bench under Trump as part of a move by the Republican president and Senate conservatives to shift the U.S. judiciary to the right.

Advocacy groups have long tried to bring lawsuits before judges they see as friendly to their views. But the number of conservative lawsuits filed in Kacsmaryk’s courthouse in Amarillo, where he is the sole judge of the district court assigned to all new cases, has led to allegations that right-wing prosecutors are seeking him because they know he will likely side with them. to elect.

Why are all these cases being brought to Amarillo if the litigants who are bringing them are so sure of the strength of their claims? It’s not because Amarillo is easy to get to, said Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas. I think it should worry the judges themselves that litigants are so transparently and blatantly funneling cases into their courtrooms.

If Kacsmaryk rules out the drug, the Food and Drug Administration, which approved the use of mifepristone, is expected to quickly appeal the ruling. Clinics have said they can continue using one other drug to terminate pregnancies if necessary, but that approach is slightly less effective.

During his confirmation hearings, Kacsmaryk told lawmakers it would be inappropriate for a judge to allow their religious beliefs

affect impact

a matter of law. He pledged to faithfully apply all Supreme Court precedents.”

As a judicial candidate, I am not a legislator. I am not acting as an advocate. I follow the law as it is written, not as I would have written it, Kacsmaryk said at the time.

Before the abortion pill case, Kacsmaryk was at the center of a legal battle over Trump’s policy of staying in Mexico, with tens of thousands of migrants seeking asylum in Mexico awaiting hearings in US immigration court.

In 2021, he ordered the policy reinstated in response to a lawsuit filed by the states of Texas and Missouri. The US Supreme Court overruled him, saying

That

the Biden administration could end the policy, which it did last August. But in Dec

,

Kacsmaryk ruled that the government was not following federal rules

–

making guidelines on ending the practice, an issue

That

the Supreme Court did not intervene.

He also ruled that allowing minors to receive free birth control without parental consent in state-funded clinics violated Texas parental rights and law.

In other cases, he ruled that the Biden administration misinterpreted part of the Affordable Care Act as prohibiting health care providers from discriminating against people because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. And he sided with Texas in his ruling against the Biden administration’s guidelines

that said employers cannot prohibit employees from using a bathroom that is consistent with their gender identity.

In another case brought by states challenging a Department of Labor rule, the Justice Department wrote in a recent lawsuit that there is no clear cause other than “court shopping,” which explains why the lawsuit was filed in Amarillo .

Kacsmaryk’s decisions matched what many conservatives hoped for and what many progressives feared, said Daniel Bennett, an associate professor at John Brown University in Arkansas, who wrote a book about the conservative Christian legal movement. This is not a judge who will necessarily ride the fence.

Kacsmaryk’s detractors said his previous writings and legal work revealed extremist views and hostility towards gay and transgender people. In articles prior to his nomination, he wrote critically of the Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade that established a nationwide right to abortion and the Obergefell Decree that legalized same-sex marriage nationally.

In 2015, he denounced an effort to pass federal protections of gender identity and sexual orientation, writing that it would not earn quarters for Americans who continue to believe and try to exercise their millennia-old religious belief that marriage and sexual relations are reserved belong to the union of one man and one woman.

A year later, he signed a letter citing another article describing the belief of being trapped in the body of the wrong gender as a firm, irrational belief rightly described as a delusion.

Republican U.S. Senator Susan Collins of Maine was among those opposed to Kacsmaryk’s nomination, citing what she described as an alarming bias against the rights of LGBTQ Americans and disregard for Supreme Court precedents.

Kacsmaryk’s defenders say he has been unfairly slandered.

Mike Davis, founder of the Article III Project, a conservative legal advocacy group, said Kacsmaryk has shown no evidence of bias on the bench. He noted that Kacsmaryk was considered qualified by the American Bar As

sn.,

meaning he met what the group describes as very high standards of integrity, professional competence and judicial character.

These allegations that he is biased are completely baseless and they falsely confuse his legal advocacy with bigotry, Davis said. These democratic politicians send a message to Christians and other believers that they are not allowed in the public square.

Prior to joining the court, Kacsmaryk worked as an assistant U.S. attorney in Texas and was involved in cases such as the prosecution of

Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari

the former Texas Tech University student from Saudi Arabia convicted of a botched bomb plot.

In 2014, Kacsmaryk joined the First Liberty Institute, which calls itself the largest legal organization in the country dedicated exclusively to defending religious freedom for all Americans. Kacsmaryk noted during his confirmation process that the group has represented all religions.

Among the litigants he defended as the institute’s deputy general counsel was an Oregon bakery that refused to provide a cake for a wedding of same-sex couples.

Clearly, his decisions were very disappointing to progressives and leftists and very pleasing to those on the right, Bennett said. But that’s kind of the nature of our judicial branch right now, especially with these hot-button issues.