On November 15, 2005, a WLF attorney urged Congress to protect the rights of out-of-state defendants to move their cases from State courts to federal courts. In testimony before a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee, WLF Chief Counsel Richard Samp argued that such “removal jurisdiction” is important to protect out-of-state defendants from the local bias they sometimes face in State courts. Samp argued that plaintiffs’ lawyers often seek to manipulate existing rules in order to prevent defendants from exercising their rights to remove cases to federal court, and urged Congress to take steps to end such manipulation. WLF’s Samp testified at the invitation of the Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property. Congress is considering a series of revisions to laws governing the jurisdiction of the federal courts, proposed by the Judicial Conference of the United States, the administrative arm of the federal judiciary.