9th Circuit Court

After reading your editorial regarding a bill I'm co-sponsoring to split the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (June 23), I've come to one of two conclusions: Either your editorial writers don't care about the legal hardships caused Montanans and the Northwest by the 9th Circuit, or they can't see the forest for the trees. Twice in the past I have supported legislation to split the 9th Circuit, but it was not given fair consideration. In order to better the chances of the bill, I have invoked the Senate privilege of placing holds on all nominees to the court until the bill passes.

WASHINGTON - The Senate confirmed Jacqueline H. Nguyen of Los Angeles to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday, making her the first Asian American woman to sit on a federal appellate court. By a 91-3 vote, the Senate agreed to Nguyen's nomination as part of an earlier deal to begin acting on President Obama's nominees. Republicans had been holding up some of the president's choices as part of a protest over White House appointments. The Senate also approved Kristine Gerhard Baker of Arkansas and John Lee of Illinois to federal district courts - making Lee the second Korean American on a federal district court.

Senate Democrats rejected on Tuesday a Republican demand that next week's scheduled confirmation hearing on Goodwin Liu's nomination to a federal appeals court be postponed, setting up an all-out partisan battle over the Berkeley law professor. Senate Republicans, who complain that Liu had originally failed to respond adequately to numerous questions on a Judiciary Committee questionnaire, pledged to continue pressing for a new hearing date. Liu, President Obama's choice for the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, had been expected to testify March 24. But in the aftermath of the March 21 healthcare vote, Senate Republicans forced a postponement by invoking a little-used procedural rule disallowing any committee hearings more than two hours after the start of a Senate session.

A federal appeals court on Wednesday ordered the owners of a gun show business and Alameda County authorities who have banned weapons from public property to mediate their 13-year-long dispute over whether the county's policy deprives citizens of their 2nd Amendment rights. Lawyers for Russell and Ann Sallie Nordyke argued two weeks ago before the full U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that the county's 1999 ordinance banning weapons even at gun shows traditionally held at the county fairgrounds stripped them of a fundamental right and exceeded the U.S. Supreme Court's definition of reasonable restrictions on guns in the interest of public safety.

Re "No Pal of the Environment" (editorial, March 23), on William G. Myers III, nominee for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals: Having worked with Myers for a number of years, please let me tell you why he should serve on the 9th Circuit. The 9th Circuit covers the West, and Myers would fill an Idaho seat recently vacated by an Idaho judge. Though no federal judge should represent anyone or anything but federal law, to the extent the 9th Circuit currently represents anything other than embarrassment -- declaring the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional, for instance, and summary reversals -- it represents President Clinton, who appointed 14 of its active 26 judges.

In the usually decorous environs of a full federal appeals court hearing, 11 black-robed judges Tuesday provoked surprised laughter as they debated whether an activist's Nazi salute to the mayor of Santa Cruz was an act of free speech or a disruption of public order. "It's OK to give the finger to a police officer," Judge Stephen Reinhardt noted helpfully, citing a previous ruling within the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Judge M. Margaret McKeown asked the Santa Cruz city attorney if boisterous positive expressions — mugging gleefully and pumping two thumbs up — at City Council meetings would also violate the rules of order.

The U.S. Supreme Court is considering, for the third time, the case of a California murderer who was sentenced to die in 1982 for the brutal killing of a young woman. Twenty years ago, the California Supreme Court affirmed a death sentence for Fernando Belmontes, but since then his case has bounced back and forth in the federal courts. Three times in this decade, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned his death sentence as flawed. The case is the latest skirmish in the long-running war between California prosecutors and the 9th Circuit over the death penalty -- and it helps explains the oddity of capital punishment in California.

President Obama will nominate UC Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday, The Times has learned. Liu carries credentials that some conservatives love to hate -- including a leadership position in a progressive legal group and a record of opposing the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. But he has conservative admirers too. Liu has supported school choice as a solution to...

Court-ordered mediation has failed to settle a lawsuit over delayed and denied care for wounded veterans so the case now goes to a U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals panel, the court reported Tuesday. Two veterans groups brought suit in 2007, alleging systemic failures in the Department of Veterans Affairs' processing of disability claims. They noted that 3,000 veterans die each year while their appeals are pending, and 18 veterans commit suicide each day on average, many suspected to be acts of despair by those with untreated post-traumatic stress disorder.

The Pledge of Allegiance to "one nation under God" doesn't violate a citizen's right to be free of state-mandated religion, a divided federal appeals court ruled Thursday in reversing one of its most controversial decisions. In a 2-1 ruling, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said no federal law requires students to recite the pledge or the religious reference in it. The 9th Circuit had ruled in 2002 in a case brought by Sacramento atheist Michael Newdow that the wording violated the Establishment Clause of the Constitution's 1st Amendment, which prohibits the enactment of any law or official policy in support of a religion.

Robert R. Beezer, a federal judge on the nation's busiest court for the last 28 years and author of landmark decisions on judicial authority, digital media sharing and capital punishment, has died of lung cancer. He was 83. Beezer's death Friday at a Seattle hospital was the sixth among U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals judges in little more than a year, dealing yet another blow to the overwhelmed bench that hears cases from nine Western states and two Pacific territories. Four of the 9th Circuit's 29 authorized active judgeships are vacant due to partisan wrangling in the U.S. Senate over nominees of President Obama, and Beezer's death now drops to 18 the number of semi-retired senior judges who help shoulder caseloads twice that of the other 12 federal appeals courts.

Civil rights groups and aspiring minority college students have lost the latest bid to get the University of California to resume considering race in its admissions decisions. Proposition 209 banned the state's public universities from using racial preferences to increase the ranks of black, Latino and Native American students, and the 1996 voter initiative has already withstood several constitutional challenges. Two years ago, a class of prospective students and affirmative action advocates sued then-Gov.

A federal appeals court Tuesday unanimously rejected a request from the Obama administration to reconsider a ruling that bone marrow donors can be compensated for providing the life-saving stem cells from their blood. None of the 25 active judges on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals took up the petition by Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr., asking for the full court to review a December ruling that the government fears could lead to money influencing donation decisions. The Dec. 1 ruling by a three-judge panel redefined bone marrow cells harvested from a donor's bloodstream as blood parts, not organ parts.

Survivors of Armenian genocide victims can't sue German insurance companies for failing to pay claims because only the federal government can bring foreign entities to court, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday. The 11-judge panel dismissed the case brought nearly a decade ago by Southern California Armenians, probably putting an end to their efforts to compel the German companies to pay survivors' benefits on policies sold to victims between 1875 and 1923. A 2000 revision to California's Civil Code allowed California courts to consider the Armenians' insurance claims beyond the deadline for petitioning for payouts by subsidiaries of the German insurance company now known as Munich Re. "The Constitution gives the federal government the exclusive authority to administer foreign affairs," the appeals court said in a unanimous ruling.

Backers of California's ban on same-sex marriage urged a federal appeals court Tuesday to reconsider and reject a Feb. 7 ruling against Proposition 8, arguing that California voters did not express disapproval of gay people but simply wanted to preserve marriage. "That the traditional definition of marriage confers a symbolic benefit on committed opposite-sex couples does not 'dishonor' gays and lesbians as a class or express official 'disapproval of them and their relationships,' " contended ProtectMarriage, the sponsors of the 2008 ballot measure that reinstated a marriage ban. "It is simply not true that when the government provides special recognition to one class of individuals, it demeans others.

Reporting from San Francisco -- A federal appeals court is expected to decide Tuesday whether California's ban on same-sex marriage violates the federal Constitution, a ruling that could reach the U.S. Supreme Court next year. A three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals announced Monday that it would release its long-awaited decision by 10 a.m. The panel will decide whether Proposition 8, the same-sex marriage ban passed by voters in 2008, violates equal protection and due process guarantees of the U.S. Constitution.

Re "Police Must Heed Suspects' Right to Silence, Court Says," Nov. 9: The "just following orders" defense didn't work at Nuremberg for the Nazis, and it doesn't work in Los Angeles and Santa Monica for the police. Kudos to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals! GEORGE C. BALDERAS Corona

The July 13 article on the high rate of reversals by the Supreme Court of liberal rulings by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (28 of 29 reviewed), failed to mention that 11 of those reversals were suffered by Judge Stephen Reinhardt, nine of them by a unanimous Supreme Court. Even the liberals on the high court apparently believe that Judge Reinhardt, the ACLU's point man on the 9th Circuit, too often lets his extreme left-wing ideology determine his rulings of law. CARL PEARLSTON Torrance Your article makes me thankful that the Supreme Court, from its "ivory aerie" in Washington, has not reviewed the other 4,571 9th Circuit Court decisions.

Reporting from San Francisco -- A federal appeals court refused Thursday to make public videotapes of the historic trial weighing the constitutionality of California's same-sex marriage ban, a victory for backers of Proposition 8. A three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals said the tapes should remain sealed because the trial judge had promised Proposition 8's defenders that they would be used only within the court. "Litigants and the public must be able to trust the word of a judge if our justice system is to function properly," the panel said.

The residential matchmakers at Roommates.com aren't engaged in housing discrimination when they heed their clients' preferences for whom they are willing to share their inner sanctum with, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday. "There's no place like home," the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals stated in defending the home as the most private of places and beyond the government's power to regulate. The ruling overturned a federal judge's decision two years ago that Roommates.com was facilitating discrimination and ordered the service to cease asking clients to state their gender, sexual orientation and whether or not children were among the prospective tenants.