The US Supreme Court remains evenly divided with four conservative and four liberal justices. This provides Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton with a legal method of getting his way relatively consistently.
Critics have charged Paxton with a legal maneuver called forum shopping, reports The Huffington Post. Forum shopping means searching for an understaffed court with a judge who will likely be sympathetic to your cause. For example, Paxton has bypassed other courts to take several recent high-profile cases to the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor.
When O’Connor rules in Paxton’s favor, appeals then head to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit—perhaps the most conservative federal court in the country. When the Fifth Circuit upholds the lower court’s ruling, the case is then sent to the Supreme Court. The currently divided court will then cause the lower court’s ruling to stand, and Paxton and Texas thus emerge triumphant.
