On that and, moreso, on the earlier bouncing around I think the litigants are due an explanation (and perhaps a corrected assignment).  And I think I, as a member of the public, am entitled to an explanation of why my government did what it did (I say that as a person who can't even get a straight answer on how to give a book to a jail inmate).

Many or most or all federal court clerk's offices are horrible bureaucratic fiefdoms.  Employees, from topmost to lowliest, run things, make decisions, and flex their bureaucratic muscle with only tangential regard for written rules and no regard to getting cases justly decided; internal standard practices and procedures are so complex that there's much room for error and varying interpretation.  In other words, most clerk's offices are snakepits ripe for corruption and favoritism.  In older simpler times, many courts, both state and federal, assigned cases by simple rotation among the judges; a lawyer with a "friend" in the clerk's office who got nice Christmas presents could just about pick the judge that would get the case he (gender specific pronoun intended) was waiting to file when the preferred number came up.  Now that clerks have arrogated themselves more power, do we think they're less prone to play favorites?