Matthew Kacsmaryk: The Worst Federal Judge in America

Not only did Donald Trump, a/k/a De Trumpenfuhrer, appoint three religious extremists to the Supreme Court who seek to make all Americans live subject to their religious beliefs (the real reason Roe v. Wade was oveturned), but he also packed lower federal courts with similar extremists - many deemed unqualified by the American Bar Association - who are now hell bent to inflict Christofascists beliefs on all citizens.  With Roe overturned, Republican judges and Republican controled state legislatures, as noted in prior posts, care nothing for the views or rights of the majority of Americans, but instead - much like the mullahs in Tehran - are using their power to strip away rights and enforce a version of "Chrstian" sharia law on all.  (Note, I use Christian in quotations because there is NOTHING Chrstian about these people).  A case in point is Matthew Kacsmaryk (pictured above left), a long time anti-abortion fanatic appointed to the federal bench in Texas by Donald Trump.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at Kacsmaryk who should never have been appoited to a judgship at any level much less a lifetime federal appointment.  It goes without saying that Kacsmaryk opposes LGBT rights and even contraception.   Here are highlights:

Congratulations are in order for Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk. The competition is fierce and will remain so, but for now he holds the title: worst federal judge in America.

Not simply for the poor quality of his judicial reasoning, although more, much more, on this in a bit. What really distinguishes Kacsmaryk is the loaded content of his rhetoric — not the language of a sober-minded, impartial jurist but of a zealot, committed more to promoting a cause than applying the law.

Kacsmaryk is the Texas-based judge handpicked by antiabortion advocates — he is the sole jurist who sits in the Amarillo division of the Northern District of Texas — to hear their challenge to the legality of antiabortion medication.

And so he did, ruling exactly as expected. In an opinion released Friday, Kacsmaryk invalidated the Food and Drug Administration’s 23-year-old approval of the abortion drug mifepristone and, for good measure, found that antiabortion medications cannot be sent by mail or other delivery service under the terms of an 1873 anti-vice law.

Even in states where abortion remains legal. Even though study after study has shown the drug to be safe and effective — far safer, for instance, than over-the-counter Tylenol. Even though — or perhaps precisely because — more than half of abortions in the United States today are performed with abortion medication.

My fury here is not because I fear that Kacsmaryk’s ruling will stand. I don’t think it will, not even with this Supreme Court. Indeed, another federal district judge, just hours after Kacsmaryk’s Good Friday ruling — issued a competing order, instructing the FDA to maintain the existing rules making mifepristone available. Even Kacsmaryk put his ruling on hold for a week; the Justice Department has already filed a notice of appeal; and the dispute is hurtling its way to the Supreme Court.

No, my beef is with ideologues in robes. That Kacsmaryk fits the description is no surprise. Before being nominated to the federal bench by President Donald Trump in 2017, Kacsmaryk served as deputy general counsel at the conservative First Liberty Institute. He argued against same-sex marriage, civil rights protections for gay and transgender individuals, the contraceptive mandate and, of course, Roe v. Wade.

Given the nationwide attention to the case, you might have thought that Kacsmaryk would have taken pains to appear as judicious as possible. But no: A dozen sentences into the opinion, his personal views about abortion become unmistakable. Mifepristone, Kacsmaryk writes, “is a synthetic steroid that blocks the hormone progesterone, halts nutrition, and ultimately starves the unborn human until death.”

Not appropriate — not even close. Unborn human and unborn child are loaded terms — and Kacsmaryk goes on to use those phrases multiple times, as in “the unborn humans extinguished by mifepriston” and “expelling the aborted human.” This does not demonstrate the judge’s scientific bona fides; it reveals his bias.

Even the majority in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization — “other jurists” who are Kacsmaryk’s actual superiors — understood this. . . . .But Kacsmaryk is more advocate than judge. His second footnote launches into supposed ties between abortion rights advocates and the eugenics movement.

He veers out of his way to raise, sympathetically, the tangential question of “fetal personhood” — the argument that the Constitution protects fetal life from the moment of conception and therefore precludes states from allowing abortion. This man really can’t help himself. He is a true believer, miscast in a judicial role.

Kacsmaryk’s legal reasoning is as irresponsible as his rhetoric. He breezes past every barrier to getting to the merits of the case. The physicians’ group concocted to bring the lawsuit has standing “because they allege adverse events from chemical abortion drugs can overwhelm the medical system and place ‘enormous pressure and stress’ on doctors during emergencies and complications.” (There is no such evidence.)

He cites, as supposedly objective sources, studies conducted by antiabortion activists . . . I could keep going, but you get the point: This is a judge who knows what conclusion he wants to reach and is going to do what he must to get there — facts, fairness and law be damned.