Well, it’s funny you should ask, I’m sure it’ll be a topic if Josh posts a story about this tomorrow. Ordinarily, litigants do NOT get to pick their judges, at least in federal courts, it is done by random assignment by the Office of the Clerk.
Like other Districts, the S.D. Fla has Local Rules, and also a set of Internal Operating Procedures, and both are available on its web page. The IOPs recite at the District’s random assignment policy, and in particular provide at IOP 2.01.01:
(c ) The assignment schedule shall be designed to prevent any litigant from
choosing the Judge to whom an action or proceeding is to be assigned, and all
attorneys shall conscientiously refrain from attempting to vary this Local Rule.
The District also has a “One Division” rule at IOP 2.02.00, to minimize expense and inconvenience to litigants and, I gather, to help ensure an even distribution of workload among judges. In this respect, the District is divided into Divisions (for example, Judge Cannon’s chambers are in Fort Pierce).
All that said, Clerks of District Courts generally requires that plaintiffs in civil cases fill out standard form JS-44, which among other things requires them to identify related cases. There may be a local practice of assigning “related cases” to a single judge (you can see why this might be so; allowing cases having, e.g., a common plaintiff and arising out of a related set of facts, assigned to different judges could create conflicting rulings etc.: judicial economy). Other Districts have this practice, but I don’t know whether S.D. Fla. does - I only skimmed the rules - but someone who practices there will know off the top of their head.
A quick answer to the underlying question you may be pondering - does Judge Cannon preside over this - is that the web page also identifies recent case assignments and is up to date as of last Friday, so we should have an answer in the next few days.