October 21, 2020
By Diane Bartz and David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, who was nominated to the court by President Barack Obama, has been selected at random to hear the U.S. Justice Department’s case against Alphabet’s Google, according to a court filing on Wednesday.
Mehta is a judge on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
Mehta, who was confirmed by the Senate in December 2014 in a voice vote, heard a Federal Trade Commission fight to block a merger of Sysco and U.S. Foods. In 2015, he ruled for the government and the deal was abandoned.
In May 2019, Mehta ruled in favor of a U.S. House of Representatives committee seeking President Donald Trump’s financial records from his accounting firm.
Mehta was previously a partner at the law firm Zuckerman Spaeder LLP and was born in India in 1971 and moved to the United States at the age of 1. He also worked as a public defender in Washington for five years.
(Reporting by Diane Bartz and David Shepardson; Editing by Nick Zieminski)
