I searched high and low for the perfect judge.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton appears to have filed his legal challenge to the Obama administration's transgender bathroom directive with a judge who has a distinctly anti-LGBT record. What a coincidence. Just weeks before the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, that very judge ruled same-sex partners shouldn't be shielded from getting fired for taking time off to care for a dying partner, reports Ian Millhiser:

A little over a year ago, Judge Reed O’Connor handed down a surprising decision targeting same-sex partners who wanted time off to care for their sick spouse. The Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) permits workers to take unpaid leave in order to care for a sick family member. A Department of Labor regulation [...] provided that same-sex couples who were lawfully married in one state could still take advantage of FMLA, even if they resided in a state that did not recognize their marriage. The same week that this rule was supposed to take effect, however, Judge O’Connor ordered it halted in an opinion accusing the Labor Department of attempting to “unilaterally impose its definition of marriage upon the states.” If an employer wanted to fire a woman because she took a few weeks of unpaid time to be with her dying wife, O’Connor effectively ruled, then that employer should be allowed to do so if the woman lived in the wrong state. [...] Attorney General Paxton’s office is located in Austin, the state’s capitol. Yet Paxton’s legal team filed this lawsuit over 300 miles away in the Wichita Falls Division of the Northern District of Texas. There is exactly one judge in the Wichita Falls Division of the Northern District of Texas: Judge Reed O’Connor.

Filing the legal challenge in Texas rather than in one of the other 10 jurisdictions that joined the suit also ensures that any appeals will be heard in the very conservative Fifth Circuit.

You might recall that Texas attorneys bent over backwards in another case in order to find a sympathetic judge—the GOP-led challenge to Obama's immigration orders. Incidentally, both the anti-LGBT and anti-immigration cases are called Texas v. U.S. Maybe Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott and indicted AG Paxton should just buy the URL, where they can provide a full list every Texas legal challenge that’s an affront to human rights.