Former President Donald Trump’s new lawsuit against the Jan. 6 House committee was assigned to one of his judicial nominees in Florida, the latest case to highlight the former president’s influence over the courts.
U.S. District Judge Rodolfo “Rudy” Ruiz II, who sits in the Fort Lauderdale division of the south Florida district court, will preside over the case, according to a public notice Monday.
Trump’s impact on the makeup of the Florida courts was underscored when he sued to stop the Justice Department from using thousands of documents seized from his Mar-a-Lago resort in an investigation into whether sensitive government information was mishandled and possible obstruction. That case was assigned to another Trump nominee, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who faced accusations of bias when she granted Trump’s request for an outside special master to review the documents and temporarily stopped investigators from using them.
Ruiz’s nomination was not controversial. He was confirmed in May 2019 by an overwhelming bipartisan vote of 90-8. He previously served on county and state courts in Florida, each time by appointment of then-Governor Rick Scott, a Republican who now serves in the U.S. Senate. Ruiz had a few of the same hallmarks of other Trump judges, including membership in Federalist Society, the powerful conservative legal group, and a clerkship for a Republican-appointed judge.
A spokesperson for the Jan. 6 committee and a representative of the Florida court declined to comment. Trump’s lawyers, David Warrington and Matthew Sarelson, did not immediately respond to requests for comment
Judges aren’t automatically barred from hearing cases that involve the president who put them on the bench. Members of the judiciary often push back on the idea that that they will side with a litigant out of political or personal loyalty. The judiciary’s ethics rules and federal law call for judges to be mindful of the appearance of partiality as well as any actual conflict of interest, but judges typically don’t step aside from a case based on the connection to their nomination.
The Florida federal court, like all federal district courts, has a practice of randomly assigning new cases. But the district’s geography and local operating procedures increase the odds of Trump landing before one of his nominees when he files a case in Palm Beach County, where his Mar-a-Lago home is located.
The court allows cases filed in one location to be assigned to a judge in a “neighboring division.” None of Trump’s five nominees sit in Palm Beach County, but all of them appear eligible to take Palm Beach cases. Four judges, including Ruiz, have chambers in Fort Lauderdale, and Cannon sits in Fort Pierce; both locations are in court divisions that bookend Palm Beach County.
The other three active judges eligible to take Palm Beach County cases were nominated under former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
The remaining seven active judges sit in Miami, which generally means they can’t be assigned Palm Beach cases, though the court’s rules do allow for exceptions. The court has a dozen senior judges who can be eligible to handle cases, but they have the option of reduced caseloads. Most senior judges also sit in Miami.
Most lawsuits challenging subpoenas issued by the Jan. 6 committee have been filed in the federal district court in Washington. Four of the court’s 14 active judges were confirmed under Trump.
