Where is 9th circuit

Search this Guide Search. Federal Appellate Courts: Records and Briefs. Carol M. Highsmith, photographer. Courtroom one, James R. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Share this page. Follow Ballotpedia. Click here to follow election results! It hears appeals from all of the circuit courts within its jurisdiction and its rulings may be appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States.

The Ninth Circuit is the largest appellate court with 29 authorized judicial posts. Appeals are heard in the James R. Nakamura Courthouse in Seattle, Washington. There are no current vacancies on the Ninth Circuit , out of the court's 29 judicial positions.

Below is a display of the number of active judges by the party of the appointing president. It does not reflect how a judge may rule on specific cases or their own political preferences.

Senior status is a classification for federal judges at all levels who are semi-retired. Senior judges are Article III judges who, having met eligibility through age and service requirements, continue to serve on federal courts while typically hearing a reduced number of cases. Some senior judges, however, elect to retain a full caseload after taking senior status.

According to the Administrative Office of U. Courts, senior judges "typically handle about 15 percent of the federal courts' workload annually. Ferdinand Francis Fernandez. Below is a display of the number of senior judges by the party of the appointing president. In order to qualify for the office of chief judge in one of the federal courts, a judge must have been in active service on the court for at least one year, be under the age of 65, and have not previously served as chief judge.

A vacancy in the office of chief judge is filled by the judge highest in seniority among the group of qualified judges. The chief judge serves for a term of seven years or until age 70, whichever occurs first. A statutory change in the s created the seven-year term. The age restrictions are waived if no members of the court would otherwise be qualified for the position. Unlike the chief justice of the United States, a chief judge returns to active service after the expiration of his or her term and does not create a vacancy on the bench by the fact of his or her promotion.

For more information on the judges of the Ninth Circuit, see former federal judges of the Ninth Circuit. The Ninth Circuit has appellate jurisdiction over cases heard in one of its subsidiary districts.

These cases can include civil and criminal matters that fall under federal law. Justice Elena Kagan is the circuit justice for the Ninth Circuit. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has jurisdiction over the district courts in the following districts :. It also has appellate jurisdiction over the following territorial courts :.

This section contains court management statistics dating back to It was last updated in June The Ninth Circuit was created by the Evarts Act of , which established nine circuit courts of appeal. The large size of the current court is due to the fact that both the population of the western states and the geographic jurisdiction of the Ninth Circuit have increased since Congress created the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in 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 came under control of the Ninth Circuit: the newly acquired territory of Hawaii in , Arizona upon its accession to statehood in , the then-territory of Alaska in , Guam in , and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands CNMI in Of those, it reversed a lower court decision times In that time period, SCOTUS has decided cases originating from the Ninth Circuit, affirming in 43 cases and reversing in cases, for a reversal rate of At the end of the term , the Ninth Circuit had the second-highest reversal rate of all the federal appeals courts.

Below is the total data ranging from to present listed by the circuit where the case originated. It also contains data from state courts, U.

The following are noteworthy cases heard before this court. To suggest cases we should cover here, email us. To read opinions published by this court, click here. Hawkins , Johnnie B. Dreyer appealed, claiming his motion to suppress the NCIS evidence, as well as evidence gathered based on that search, should have been granted, rather than denied.

Dreyer's attorney said that the use of evidence gathered by NCIS rendered his conviction moot, since the Posse Comitatus Act prevents military bodies like the NCIS from participating in law enforcement activities directed at civilians.

A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit agreed with Dreyer. Judge Marsha Berzon wrote for the majority. She stated that it is common knowledge that NCIS and other military groups conduct these types of searches regularly. She compared what Logan did here with other NCIS agents stopping drunk drivers and arresting them, only to turn them over to the local police for prosecution. The lone dissenter, Judge Diarmuid O'Scannlain , said that to apply the exclusionary rule in cases like this should be the last resort; societal costs must be considered before excluding evidence.

He was particularly scathing when writing how the majority decision benefited Dreyer, who possessed illegal child pornography in his home. Writing for the majority, Judge Richard Paez said that these types of provisions run afoul of the First Amendment.

Paez said the laws prevented a candidate from speaking out, which is their right. He said that states that wished to avoid a politicized judiciary should not allow for the election of judges.

Judge Marsha Berzon concurred in the holding, but her concurrence emphasized that the majority holding applied only to judicial candidates, not incumbent judges running for re-election. Judge Richard Tallman dissented in part with the majority; he found that some of the code struck down was narrowly tailored, in particularly the two provisions on candidate campaigning. Clinton argued that his work was protected from involuntary transfer because the songs were exempt under Section e of the Copyright Act.

That provision states that intellectual property cannot be unwillingly taken from an author if he or she has never transferred that property previously. The lower court found that the author of the songs was not, in fact, George Clinton; the author was actually Warner Bros. Clinton wrote and recorded the songs as part of a work-for-hire arrangement with the studio.

He later sued and obtained the copyrights to the songs as an assignee, not an author. As a result, the lower court said the songs had been transferred previously by the author, Warner Bros. On January 21, , a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit , comprised of Judges Stephen Reinhardt , Marsha Berzon , and Senior Judge Mary Schroeder , ruled that peremptory strikes made by attorneys during jury selection may not be based on a juror's sexual orientation.

At trial, an attorney for Abbott used a peremptory strike to bar a gay man's service on the jury, seemingly due only to his sexual orientation. GSK's attorney raised a Batson challenge, meaning opposing counsel needed to provide a nondiscriminatory reason for the requested juror strike.

Before this case, Batson challenges had only applied to race and gender. Wilken allowed Abbott's strike to stand, and after a jury verdict was issued, GSK appealed, claiming that a new trial was warranted due to Abbott's unconstitutionally permitted peremptory strike based on sexual orientation.

Writing for the majority of the three-judge panel, Reinhardt concluded that Batson was applicable, because "permitting a strike based on sexual orientation would send the false message that gays and lesbians could not be trusted to reason fairly on issues of great import to the community or the nation.

A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit ruled on January 17, , in an opinion written by Judge Andrew Hurwitz , that bloggers have the same protection from defamation suits as journalists. That protection requires the plaintiffs to prove in court that the blogger used actual malice when posting the statements online.

That phrase "actual malice" is defined in the landmark case New York Times v. Sullivan as knowingly or recklessly making false statements. In other words, the plaintiff has to prove that what the defendant said was untrue and knew it to be untrue when it was said. Further, the court held that Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc. That case gives private individuals a right to sue for defamation, but they may only obtain actual damages, not punitive damages.

The Ninth Circuit found that Padrick, who was the subject of the one remaining statement made by Cox, was a private individual because the statements were made about his role as a bankruptcy trustee appointed by a court.

Therefore, he was unable to receive punitive damages. The Blondins sued the city of Snohomish and Shelton individually for unlawful arrest, the use of excessive force and a common law doctrine called outrage, wherein a spouse can recover damages for seeing her husband in extreme pain at the hands of someone else. The defendants were granted summary judgment Refers to a judgment granted on a claim about which there is no genuine issue of fact and to which the party moving for judgment prevails as a matter of law.

Hawkins , Jacqueline Nguyen and James Selna sitting by designation , found that there was no evidence Blondin was resisting the officers or attempting to stop their actions; he was inquiring what they were doing to his neighbor. As a result, the city and Shelton were liable for Blondin's having been tased.

Judge Nguyen dissented from the majority opinion, written by Judge Hawkins. Judge Nguyen felt that Blondin was interjecting himself into a police matter, and the officers were reacting to several issues at one time.

On December 8, , the court heard arguments regarding Proposition 8 , California's same-sex marriage ban. On February 7, , a three-judge appellate panel from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued its ruling in Perry v. Brown , which upheld the rulings by District Court Judges Vaughn Walker and James Ware and overturned California's Proposition 8, which had blocked same sex marriage in the state. The panel, consisting of Judges Michael D. The ruling stated:. In effect, the court concluded that, because domestic partnerships had already established equal rights for same-sex couples, the measure only served to deny these relationships the designation of "marriage.

The panel rendered split in its decision with Judge Randy Smith concurring in part and dissenting in part. The panel upheld both the decisions of Chief Judge Ware, as well as Senior Judge Walker, whose original decision had been challenged on the grounds that Walker had an undisclosed long-term relationship with another man at the time of the case.

In a separate ruling, the same panel refused to release the videos from the original trial. Another hotly contested case considered by the Ninth Circuit arose from the enactment of a California law permitting the cultivation and use of marijuana for medicinal purposes. In Raich v. Ashcroft , F. The Ninth Judicial Circuit Court is located in the heart of Central Florida and is one of 20 judicial circuits in the state.

Serving Orange and Osceola counties, the Ninth Circuit covers over 2, square miles and serves more than 1. There are currently 66 judges serving in the Ninth Circuit. On average, the circuit receives over , new cases each year. As a court of general jurisdiction, both county and circuit level cases are heard in the circuit. The Judges of the Ninth Judicial Circuit have developed numerous court programs to help facilitate the judicial process and to better serve the people of Orange and Osceola Counties.

See job openings and apply online for positions within the Ninth Circuit. Any and all other destructive devices and additional items not listed, considered dangerous by the security officials may be confiscated. Skip to main content. About the Court. Judges There are currently 66 judges serving in the Ninth Circuit. Programs The Judges of the Ninth Judicial Circuit have developed numerous court programs to help facilitate the judicial process and to better serve the people of Orange and Osceola Counties.

Careers See job openings and apply online for positions within the Ninth Circuit.