O'Connor has been very receptive to the Trump admin and its anti-trans efforts, but an FTC request to him is now on hold after "consultation
Chris Geidner at Law Dork:
The Trump administration apparently found a way to go so far afield of appropriate litigation tactics that even U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor has agreed to put a case before him on hold. In a late-night filing on Thursday, Federal Trade Commission lawyers, joined by lawyers from Texas and Iowa, asked O’Connor to issue an extraordinary and manipulative order in the FTC’s lawsuit targeting the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, Inc. (WPATH) for what they claim are its “deceptive practices” regarding the provision of gender-affirming care for minors. The Thursday night request sought an order from O’Connor — a far-right George W. Bush appointee in the Northern District of Texas — barring WPATH from “seeking relief in this matter from courts other than this Court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and the United States Supreme Court.“ It was a blatant effort to make an end-run around another court and another case involving WPATH and the FTC, before U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington, D.C. By Friday afternoon, however, O’Connor announced that his consideration of the FTC’s request was on hold following “consultation” that O’Connor held with Boasberg.
What is going on?
O’Connor issued a similar order earlier this year to the one requested by the FTC on Thursday, in conjunction with the challenge to DOJ’s administrative subpoena issued against Rhode Island Hospital. There, the order was absurd, but it did at least follow a factual scenario — as bad as it was — where the initial litigation in the case about the Rhode Island hospital was in Texas. This time, however, WPATH had filed its own lawsuit against the FTC in February. The case was filed in D.C. — where the FTC is headquartered — and the case was assigned Boasberg, an Obama appointee. The FTC’s lawsuit, on the other hand, wasn’t filed in the Northern District of Texas until June 17 — more than a month after Boasberg had issued a preliminary injunction and associated opinion in the WPATH-brought case. Because of that, on June 30, WPATH filed a motion (and memorandum of law) before Boasberg seeking to block the FTC “from litigating the claims asserted in FTC v. WPATH, 4:26-cv-748-O (N.D. Tex.), except as mandatory counterclaims brought before this Court.“ As part of that filing, in discussing other grand jury subpoenas issued relating to gender-affirming care, one of WPATH’s lawyers acknowledged that one of its members had received a grand jury subpoena out of the Northern District of Texas on June 16 — the day before the filing of the FTC’s lawsuit there but still well after the initial injunction in the case before Boasberg. Following that June 30 filing, the parties conferred and submitted a proposed briefing schedule, which Boasberg approved on Thursday.
The Trump Regime’s request in FTC v. WPATH has been put on hold by far-right judicial activist Reed O’Connor, who nearly always grants the Trump Regime nearly everything they ask.
See Also:
The Advocate: Trump officials were so extreme in transgender health case that a Texas judge hit pause