Mark Pittman
Judge Mark Pittman is a Donald Trump-appointed judge in the U.S. District Court in Northern District of Texas. As a judge, he enjoined the dministration’s student loan forgiveness plan, struck down gun safety rules, limited labor rights, blocked affirmative action measures, and ruled against labor unions.
Numerous reports have shown that Republicans have been strategically filing court cases in the Northern Texas District—a process known as “forum shopping” or “judge shopping.”
Since taking the bench, Pittman has developed a reputation for siding with these litigants, who have frequently targeted policies of the Biden administration. For example, in 2022, he struck down the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness program. As Bloomberg Law described, “conservative groups have tactically ensured that their legal challenges to Biden administration policies get in front of Kacsmaryk, or Mark Pittman or Reed O’Connor, Republican appointees who between them hear 90% of civil cases in Fort Worth.”
He also issued the first major decision regarding Texas gun laws since the U.S. Supreme Court opinion in New York v. Bruen, in which the right-wing faction dominating the U.S Supreme Court struck down a long-standing public carry law in Bruen. Clarence Thomas invented a brand new test in his decision that gutted state gun laws across the country. Thomas cherry-picked his preferred history and allowed for like-minded lower court judges to do the same, which is precisely what Pittman did in his Firearms Policy Coalition, Inc. v. McCraw opinion, which struck down a Texas law that prohibited adults under 21 years of age from obtaining a license to carry a handgun or carrying a handgun for self-defense outside their homes. He also captured headlines after issuing a ruling that a U.S. minority business agency must aid white individuals, citing Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard over 30 times in his opinion, the case in which the Supreme Court upended race-conscious college admissions.
He also blocked the Biden administration’s efforts to exempt unaccompanied migrant children from a controversial Trump-era order, which U.S. border agents have used to expel migrants during the coronavirus pandemic. “Granting a request made by Republican officials in Texas, District Court Judge Mark Pittman barred the Biden administration from exempting migrant children traveling without their parents from the pandemic-era expulsion policy, which is known as Title 42, a section of the U.S. public health code,” CBS News reported.
In 2022, he garnered negative headlines after the Fifth Circuit panel declared that Pittman abused his discretion in dismissing a personal injury lawsuit against Spirit Airlines and the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport. “[U.S. District Judge Mark] Pittman’s dismissal of a lawsuit over a missed filing deadline [was] ‘overkill’ and an abuse of discretion,” a federal appeals court said in reviving the case, Law.com reported.
Pittman has several ties to Leonard Leo, a central figure in the capture of the U.S. Supreme Court and who is co-chair of the Federalist Society. An active member of Federalist Society, Pittman is a former vice-president and founding member of the group’s Fort Worth Chapter. According to his 2022 and 2021 financial disclosure reports, he continues to serve on the chapter’s Board of Advisors.
His participation in the group raises concerns over a May 2024 ruling in which he blocked efforts by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to limit credit card late fees from $8 down to $32. The watchdog group Accountable noted the U.S. Chamber of Commerce heavily funds the Federalist Society. “Since 2008, The U.S. Chamber Has Donated Between $800,000 To Nearly $1.2 Million To The Federalist Society,” the report headlined.
Pittman also sits on the A.M. Pate, Jr., Book Award on Civil War History Selection Committee at the Fort Worth Civil War Roundtable and is an adjunct professor at Texas A&M University School of Law. According to reporting by the Intercept, Leo steered $25 million in donations to the law school to establish the Center on the Structural Constitution.
Before becoming a federal district court judge, Pittman worked as an Associate Justice on Texas’s Second Court of Appeals from 2017 to 2019. Before that he was a state judge on the 352nd District Court of Texas from 2014 to 2015. As a state court judge, he ruled in favor of management when he filed a permanent injunction preventing a number of labor unions from demonstrating against Wal-Mart in its stores and parking lots.
Pittman also previously worked as a Special Assistant in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas. He worked in the George W. Bush administration as a Trial Attorney for the Civil Division Commercial Litigation Branch, as an Assistant United States Attorney for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of Texas, and as an Enforcement Attorney for the Securities and Exchange Commission. Early in his career, Pittman was a Litigation Associate at Kelly, Hart & Hallman from 1999-2000 and again from 2001-04. In between, he clerked for Judge Eldon B. Mahon, a Nixon-appointee, on the same court on which he currently sits.
He earned his law degree from the University of Texas School of Law in 1999.