DJ profiles Judge Bennett

Today's DJ has Trump 9th Circuit Appointee, Thought a Moderate, Veers Right: Trump’s first successful nominee to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was expected to be a moderate. But a year into his confirmation, Judge Mark J. Bennett is showing signs he’s not quite the middle of the road voice his critics, and supporters, claimed he would be.

Conservative critics feared Bennett, who had previously supported gay marriage rights, would be an easy win for the Trump White House but would do little to change the ideological balance of the liberal 9th Circuit.

Unlike other younger nominees advanced by this White House, Bennett, a sexagenarian, was a latecomer to the Federalist Society, only joining in 2016.

A Cornell Law School graduate who clerked for a federal district judge in Hawaii, Bennett stood apart from the idealized Trump judicial pick: a Harvard or Yale Law School graduate who spent a year or two working at the nation’s high court, preferably for Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas.

Republicans were so lukewarm about him that 27 red state senators voted against Bennett when he was confirmed in July 2018. All 45 Democrats and the two independents who caucus with them voted for him. 

But one year into his tenure on the bench, Bennett has, so far, appeared not to be the moderate voice court watchers expected him to be. Instead, the most senior of Trump’s seven successfully confirmed 9th Circuit judges has been one of the most active conservative dissenters since he joined the court.