The Ninth Circuit is by far the largest of the thirteen courts of appeals, covering a total of 9 states and 2 territories and with 29 active judgeships.

All my adult life, the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has been notorious as a liberal bastion where normal activities could be held unlawful and where radical left policies could easily be defended.  The Ninth was also notorious for for their rulings being ultimately overturned by the Supreme Court.  

Under the Trump administration, there was not only a major effort to appoint more traditional judges to the Supreme Court but there was a particular effort to address the egregiousness of the Ninth Circuit Court.  With his appointment of ten judges to the Ninth Circuit Court, it was claimed that the viper's nest of overturned decisions had been fixed.  But many things are claimed which simply aren't true.

However, in the past couple of years, I have heard less and less of the Ninth and mockable decisions.  Perhaps the targeted effort to solve the problem has worked?  Well, perhaps.

From San Jose Unified School District Discriminated Against Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Based on … by Eugene Volokh.  The subheading is the FCA's requirement that leaders "abide by a Statement of Faith, which includes the belief that sexual relations should be limited within the context of a marriage between a man and a woman" -- so holds a Ninth Circuit's panel.  

Basically, a case was brought to the Ninth concerning a public school district which was blatantly and maliciously discriminating against Christians.  The Ninth found against the school district.  That doesn't sound like much but it was exactly the sort of egregious case which in the past the Ninth would have found some means to rationalize and endorse. 

Pioneer’s Climate Committee—the body that led the district-wide push for FCA derecognition—had members that expressed remarkably similar hostile statements. Peter Glasser was the most forthcoming about his contempt for FCA’s religious beliefs. The day after learning about FCA’s religious-based views on marriage and sexuality, Glasser channeled his inner Martin Luther, pinning the Statement of Faith and Sexual Purity Statement to his classroom whiteboard along with his grievances. But instead of a reformation, Glasser demanded an inquisition. As he explained in emails sent to Principal Espiritu, FCA’s “bullshit” views “have no validity” and amount to heresy because they violated “my truth.” Glasser believed “attacking these views is the only way to make a better campus” and proclaimed that he would not be an “enabler for this kind of ‘religious freedom’ anymore.”

Glasser’s desire to attack FCA’s views makes plain that FCA, putting it charitably, was “less than fully welcome” on Pioneer’s campus. Glasser’s comments also improperly imputed insincerity to FCA’s religious views by referring to their beliefs as an exercise in (air quotes) “religious freedom.”

Glasser was not the only skeptic. Michelle Bowman also serves on the Climate Committee and as faculty advisor to the Satanic Temple Club. In discussing this lawsuit with a former student, she opined that “evangelicals, like FCA, are charlatans and not in the least bit Christian,” and “choose darkness over knowledge and they perpetuate ignorance.” But it is not for Bowman to dictate what beliefs are genuinely Christian.  Id. at 1731 (The government cannot "pass[ ] judgment upon or presuppose[ ] the illegitimacy of religious beliefs."). Nor should the government disfavor religious-based beliefs, even if many may view them as not "acceptable, logical, consistent, or comprehensible."

With these two individuals in the room, the Climate Committee concluded that FCA's Statement of Faith and Sexual Purity Statement go against Pioneer High School's core values and that the Committee "need[s] to take a united stance" against FCA. The Committee's unity suggests there was little to no push back against Glasser and Bowman's views. So does the speed of the derecognition decision—two days later, Principal Espiritu informed FCA that they had lost recognition without giving FCA's students any opportunity to defend themselves or their organization. At least the baker in Masterpiece Cakeshop had a chance to be heard.

Equally telling was the continued hostility towards FCA even after it lost ASB recognition and thus could not possibly violate the School District’s non-discrimination policies. In an effort “to ban FCA completely from campus,” Glasser ginned up another potential “avenue” of attack during Summer 2019. He posited that FCA could be accused of violating the School District’s sexual harassment policy by creating “a hostile work environment for students and faculty.” In other words, teenagers—meeting privately to discuss the Bible—were creating a hostile work environment for adult faculty, according to Glasser. There is no indication in the record that Glasser’s inimical view of FCA was rebuffed.

But in reading this article, it prompted me to go over to Wikipedia to see if I could get a sense of the magnitude of Trump's changes.  In doing so, Wikipedia reminded me of something I had sort of forgotten - its sheer size.

Headquartered in San Francisco, California, the Ninth Circuit is by far the largest of the thirteen courts of appeals, covering a total of 9 states and 2 territories and with 29 active judgeships. The court's regular meeting places are Seattle at the William Kenzo Nakamura United States Courthouse, Portland at the Pioneer Courthouse, San Francisco at the James R. Browning U.S. Court of Appeals Building, and Pasadena at the Richard H. Chambers U.S. Court of Appeals.

Panels of the court occasionally travel to hear cases in other locations within the circuit. Although the judges travel around the circuit, the court arranges its hearings so that cases from the northern region of the circuit are heard in Seattle or Portland, cases from southern California and Arizona are heard in Pasadena, and cases from northern California, Nevada, Hawaii, and the Pacific territories are heard in San Francisco. Additionally, the court holds yearly sittings in Anchorage and Honolulu. For lawyers who must come and present their cases to the court in person, this administrative grouping of cases helps to reduce the time and cost of travel. Ninth Circuit judges are also appointed by the United States Secretary of the Interior to serve as temporary acting Associate Justices for non-federal appellate sessions at the High Court of American Samoa in Fagatogo.

[snip]

The Ninth Circuit's large size is due to the dramatic increases in both the population of the western states and the court's geographic jurisdiction that have occurred since the U.S. Congress created the Ninth Circuit in 1891. The court was originally granted appellate jurisdiction over federal district courts in California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington. As new states and territories were added to the federal judicial hierarchy in the twentieth century, many of those in the West were placed in the Ninth Circuit: the newly acquired Territory of Hawaii in 1900, Arizona upon its admission to the Union in 1912, the Territory of Alaska in 1948, Guam in 1951, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands in 1977.

And then there are the facts behind its former tendency to make bad decisions which would then be overturned by the Supreme Court.

However, a detailed study in 2018 reported by Brian T. Fitzpatrick, a law professor at Vanderbilt University, looked at how often a federal circuit court was reversed for every thousand cases it terminated on the merits between 1994 and 2015. The study found that the Ninth Circuit's decisions were reversed at a rate of 2.50 cases per thousand, which was by far the highest rate in the country, with the Sixth Circuit second as 1.73 cases per thousand. Fitzgerald also noted that the 9th Circuit was unanimously reversed more than three times as often as the least reversed circuits and over 20% more often than the next closest circuit.