If you have any doubts about the long-term benefits of Donald Trump’s Presidency, doubt no more. The president’s recent appointments are tilting the balance of the 9th circuit court toward conservatives.
The 9th Circuit will not be known as the 9th Circus much longer.
The following is from an excellent column in The Washington Post.
The 9th Circuit is so notorious among congressional Republicans that as recently as the last Congress, they held hearings to consider splitting up the circuit geographically, on the premise its rulings, which once applied to a reported 4 percent of the country, now cover 20 percent of Americans — too much liberal influence, perhaps.
But that’s about to change.
Once the president’s current 9th Circuit nominees are confirmed, there will be
12 GOP appointees among the court’s 29 full-time judges with one vacancy left
for the president to fill. Almost half of the bench will lean right. Thanks to
Trump, the liberal 9th Circuit will be liberal no more.
The president has conservative
nominees slated to fill four out of five vacancies: Daniel P. Collins, who, according
to Climate Liability News, “has defended the oil industry in high-profile
climate and environmental cases,” and who clerked for the late Supreme Court
Justice Antonin Scalia; Daniel A. Bress, who also clerked for Scalia and, at
39, would likely serve on the federal appellate bench for decades; Kenneth Lee,
who worked
in President George W. Bush’s White House and has written articles criticizing
affirmative action programs; and Bridget Bade, a federal magistrate judge who clerked for
conservative Judge Edith Jones of the 5th Circuit.
If they’re ultimately
confirmed, these four will join three recent Trump appointees already on the
9th Circuit with conservative bona fides: Ryan
D. Nelson, who served on the staff of former senator and Trump attorney
general Jeff Sessions; Mark
Bennett, a onetime Republican attorney general of Hawaii; and Eric Miller,
who clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas, was opposed
by liberal-leaning Native American advocacy organizations and was confirmed
earlier this week over the objections
of both of his Democratic home-state senators.]
These new judges follow
several 9th Circuit judges who were among the most liberal ever to sit on a
federal court, including the late Stephen Reinhardt, the “liberal lion” who
authored the opinion tossing
California’s ban on same-sex marriage; and the late Harry Pregerson, arguably
even more liberal than Reinhardt, who in his 1979 confirmation hearing told
the Senate that “if I had to follow my conscience or the law, I would follow my
conscience.” They’re also filling vacancies left by unpredictable,
libertarian-leaning conservative Judge Alex Kozinski, who retired
in 2017 facing sexual harassment allegations, and the late John Noonan, a
tough-to-label moderate whose decisions often leaned on
Catholic moral teaching.
