Matthew Kacsmaryk

Matthew Joseph Kacsmaryk ( 1977) is a United States district judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.

Kacsmaryk was born in 1977 in Gainesville, Florida.

His mother, Dorothy, was a microbiologist; Kacsmaryk's sister, Griffith, recalled that she chose to stay home with her children and was passionate about anti-abortion issues.

He graduated from Abilene Christian University in 1999 with a Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude.

He then attended the University of Texas School of Law, where he was an executive editor of the conservative Texas Review of Law & Politics.

Kacsmaryk previously worked for the law firm Baker Botts in 2003 to 2008, then worked as a federal prosecutor in Texas from 2008 to 2013, and then worked for the conservative Christian legal organization First Liberty Institute from 2014 to 2019.

He graduated with a Juris Doctor with honors in 2003.

From 2003 to 2008, he was an associate in the Dallas office of Baker Botts, where he focused on commercial, constitutional, and intellectual property litigation.

From 2008 through 2013, he was an assistant United States attorney in the Northern District of Texas where he was lead counsel in over 75 criminal appeals and co-counsel in high-profile criminal and terrorism trials.

Kacsmaryk has been a member of the Fort Worth chapter of the Federalist Society since 2012.

He has also been a member of the Red Mass committee for the Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth.

In 2013, Kacsmaryk received the attorney general's award for excellence in furthering the interests of U.S. national security for his work in United States v. Aldawsari.

From 2014 to 2019, he worked for First Liberty Institute, where he held the position of deputy general counsel.

Reuters described Kacsmaryk as a "one-time Christian activist", noting that First Liberty Institute is "a Christian conservative legal group that pursues religious-liberty cases".

While working for First Liberty Institute in 2015, he submitted an amicus brief for a lawsuit in the Supreme Court, and argued against a Washington law mandating that pharmacies are required to provide contraceptives.

He was nominated to the position by President Donald Trump in 2017 and sworn in for the position in 2019.

In 2023, he presided over a lawsuit regarding the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)'s approval of abortion medication mifepristone in 2000, and had issued a preliminary ruling suspending the approval of the drug, marking the first time a court tried to invalidate the approval of a drug over the FDA's objection.

On September 7, 2017, President Donald Trump nominated Kacsmaryk to serve as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, to the seat vacated by judge Mary Lou Robinson, who assumed senior status on February 3, 2016.

On December 13, 2017, a hearing on his nomination was held before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

On January 3, 2018, his nomination was returned to the president under Rule XXXI, Paragraph 6 of the United States Senate.

On January 5, 2018, Trump announced his intent to renominate Kacsmaryk to a federal judgeship.

On January 8, 2018, his renomination was sent to the Senate.

On January 18, 2018, his nomination was reported out of committee by an 11–10 vote.

The American Bar Association's Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary rated Kacsmaryk "qualified" for the federal district bench (this is below the ABA's rating of "well qualified” but above its rating of "not qualified"). Senate Democrats and LGBT advocacy groups opposed his nomination due to his writings and comments on LGBT rights and women's right to contraception. He has worked on cases opposing certain LGBT protections in housing, employment, and health care. He has referred to homosexuality as "disordered", and to being transgender as a "delusion" and a "mental disorder". He opposed the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling that had legalized abortion in the United States.

On January 3, 2019, his nomination was returned to Trump under Rule XXXI, Paragraph 6 of the United States Senate.

On January 23, 2019, Trump announced his intent to renominate Kacsmaryk for a federal judgeship.

His nomination was sent to the Senate later that day.

On February 7, 2019, his nomination was reported out of committee by a 12–10 vote.

On June 18, 2019, the Senate invoked cloture on his nomination by a 52–44 vote.

On June 19, 2019, his nomination was confirmed by a 52–46 vote.

He received his judicial commission on June 21, 2019.

Kacsmaryk serves the Amarillo division of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, which encompasses 26 counties in the Texas Panhandle.

Conservative groups have strategically chosen to file lawsuits challenging many Biden administration policies in Kacsmaryk's division.

Kacsmaryk is the only federal judge in the Amarillo Division of the Northern District; 95% of lawsuits filed there are assigned to him.

Legal experts have cited the practice as an example of "forum shopping" or "judge shopping."

By March 2023, the Texas Attorney General's Office under Ken Paxton filed 28 lawsuits against the Biden administration in federal district courts in Texas; of those, 18 were filed in single-judge divisions, including Kacsmaryk's division and a single-judge division held by another Trump appointee, Drew B. Tipton.

Kacsmaryk and Tipton have denied various Justice Department motions to change venues.

In 2021, Kacsmaryk ordered the reinstatement of the "Remain in Mexico" policy, a Trump administration policy that required asylum seekers to wait outside U.S. territory while their claims are processed.

In his order, he said that the Biden administration had ended the policy without fully considering the consequences.

His decision was overturned by the Supreme Court of the United States on June 30, 2022.