page_title: Amit Mehta
section_title: Federal judicial service
hierarchical_section_title: Amit Mehta / Federal judicial service
caption_attribution_description: English: District Judge Amit P. Mehta
context_page_description: Amit Priyavadan Mehta is a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. He was appointed by Barack Obama and began his term on December 19, 2014.
context_section_description: On July 31, 2014, President Obama nominated Mehta to serve as a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, to the seat vacated by Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle, who took senior status on June 3, 2014. He received a hearing  before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary on September 17, 2014. On November 20, 2014 his nomination was reported out of committee by voice vote. On Saturday, December 13, 2014 Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid filed a motion to invoke cloture on the nomination. On December 16, 2014, Reid withdrew his cloture motion on Mehta's nomination, and the Senate proceeded to vote to confirm Mehta in a voice vote. He received his federal judicial commission on December 19, 2014.
  In May 2019, Mehta ruled that accounting firm Mazars had to provide its records of Donald Trump's accounts from before his presidency to the House Oversight Committee in response to their subpoena. In a 41-page opinion, he asserted that Congress has the right to investigate potential illegal behavior by a president, including actions both before and after the president assumed office. The ruling will be appealed by Trump's personal legal team.
  In July 2019, Mehta sided with pharmaceutical firms Merck & Co., Eli Lilly & Co., and Amgen Inc., and blocked a Trump administration rule requiring drugmakers to put prices in television ads, a central part of the president’s push to lower the cost of prescription medications.  The goal of the rule was to increase transparency; Mehta ruled that requiring big pharmaceutical companies to disclose prices to consumers in television advertisements was something that could be done only by HHS if mandated by congress. Mehta did not find basis to the claim by the plaintiffs that the rule would violate their free speech rights as corporations.
caption: Judge Mehta in 2015
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