On January 22, U.S. District Court Judge Leo T. Sorokin asked the plaintiffs in the birthright citizenship case to file a brief by January 24, giving their view as to whether their case, State of New Jersey v Trump, is really closely related to another case that had been filed a few hours later on the same subject. That case is Doe v Trump, 1:25cv-10135. That case had been randomly assigned to Judge Sorokin. Then, a few hours later, when the New Jersey case was filed, the plaintiffs in that case aid that their case is closely related to the Doe case, and therefore Judge Sorokin should be on that case also. But Judge Sorokin is not persuaded that the two cases should be linked. If, after reading the New Jersey brief on that point, he decides that the two cases are not related, the New Jersey case will go through the random procedure of choosing a judge. Of course, it is then conceivable that the random process would end up picking Judge Sorokin anyway.