Today I was talking to a judge who supported the Judicial Conference's new "policy." I asked him how many single judge divisions there were. He had no clue. I asked him how many of those courts had issued national injunctions. He could name two, both of whom are in Texas: Judge Kacsmaryk (Amarillo, N.D.) and Judge Tipton (Victoria, S.D.)
So how many judges sit in single judge divisions? The answer is exceptionally difficult to figure out. Most district court web sites list the locations of courthouses, and may indicate which judges are assigned to which divisions. But judges often pick up cases in more than one division. None of that information is readily available on the web site. To figure out the distribution of cases, you would have to dig through division of work orders, which are subject to change at random intervals. Wikipedia lists the "duty stations" of various district court judges, but I have no idea how accurate that information is.
One of the most thorough analyses of this issue came in Steve Vladeck's amicus brief in United States v. Texas, which was filed in July 2022. According to Appendix A in Vladeck's brief, the Texas Attorney General filed challenges to federal policy in two single-judge divisions: Judge Tipton (Victoria, S.D.) and Judge Brown (Galveston, S.D.). At the time, Amarillo was not a single-judge division. In July 2019, Chief Judge Barbara Lynn had assigned herself 5% of Kacsmaryk's cases, but in September 2022, now-Chief-Judge-Godbey superseded that order. (Judge Lynn took similar action against Judge O'Connor's Wichita Falls Division; that reassignment has also been rescinded.)
