Bloomberg Law has Trump’s Mark on Ninth Circuit Tested as Challenges Progress
- Trump reshaped the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit during his first term. He flipped four seats once held by judges tapped by Democrats and left the court with nearly as many Republican-appointed active judges as Democratic ones. The appeals court’s more balanced composition increases the odds that progressive litigants challenging Trump’s second term agenda might wind up with a panel of majority Republican-appointed judges. The Ninth Circuit has 16 Democratic and 13 Republican appointees. It also makes their chances of winning a case heard en banc—a process where a randomly selected group of active judges rethinks a panel ruling—more of a wildcard.
‘Hard Pivot’ The first Trump administration inherited a Ninth Circuit with more than twice the number of Democratic-appointed judges as Republican appointed ones, plus several vacancies. Trump then installed 10 judges on the court between 2018 and 2020.
With the confirmation of Eric Tung, his first Ninth Circuit pick of his second term, Trump has appointed more than a third of the active bench, and 11 of the court’s 13 Republican-picked judges. The last time that court that many Republican appointees was in 1996
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