The case against the Trump U trial's presiding Judge Curiel, using Jeffrey Lord's American Spectator piece, is basically that he's pro-Hispanic and liberal. Does that mean that, from the bench, that he would stack the deck against Anglos and conservatives? If that's the case, then we should have evidence from his work as a judge (rather than off-bench pro-Chicano and anti-traditional-sexual morality musings) that the guy is bad news for Anglos.
That would be the fear, but Trump isn't likely the first un-liberal Anglo to be before his court. In addition, the Trump U case before him isn't political per se. The question at hand, as I understand it, is whether customers/"students" of the program were offered stuff that was never delivered. A liberal jurist might have a slight bias towards consumers and against an alleged corporate fraudster, but the case wouldn't play too much differently if it was Elon Musk U or Mark Cuban U over-promising and under-delivering.
However, the case doesn't seem to have a Chicano-Anglo angle outside of the political stances of the plaintiff. As far as I know, Trump U was (if I can have a little poetic licence) selling instruction on The Art of The Deal without any wetback-bashing thrown in.
If Curiel does stack the deck against Trump, appellate courts and the court of public opinion will account for that. An appeals court should reverse any clearly biased moves and cheap shots from slanted rulings will make Trump be able to play the victim and get what passes for a sympathy vote.
You don't get to pick a political ally to preside over your case. You don't get to pick someone from an ethnic group that you like to be the judge, either. If they're biased against you or your ethnicity or your politics enough to make a dent in your case, you can make an argument to get a different judge named, but that doesn't seem to be the case here, at least not from Mr Lord's argument.
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