Forum shopping & Judge shopping does happen, obviously.

This wasn’t such a case. The overall venue was the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California, appropriate because it includes Sacramento, the capital of California, home of both the legislature that passed the statute and home of the executive branches who would have been tasked with enforcing it. And the case was specifically filed in the Sacramento Division of the Eastern District. Even though the Judge in this case was appointed by G.W. Bush, he is not considered a doctrinaire conservative by any standard. Bush generally was more yielding in consulting with the home State Senators (then Boxer and Feinstein) in making District Judge choices.

The simple truth is that not even a liberal Judge could ignore the simple fact that this law failed Constitutionality on blatant and obvious grounds.