9th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Reinhardt passed away Thursday, opening the door for Trump to nominate the first Conservative judge to the hard-left leaning circuit in a generation.
Judge Stephen Reinhardt was a judge on the liberal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. He played an essential role in a number of the Circuit’s most liberal rulings, including the 2012 decision to strike down California’s ban on gay marriage.
“All parties agree that Proposition 8 had one effect only,” he wrote in the 2012 decision. “It stripped same-sex couples of the ability they previously had possessed to obtain from the state, or any other authorized party, an important right — the right to obtain and use the designation of ‘marriage’ to describe their relationships. Nothing more, nothing less.”
Reinhardt also played a crucial role in the 9th Circuit’s ‘resistance’ to President Trump’s immigration policies, ruling last year that unaccompanied illegal alien children have a right to periodic bond hearings, meaning that illegal aliens have a right to petition for their release. It is widely known and accepted that the vast majority of illegal aliens released on bond or on a “notice to appear” never appear for their subsequent hearings.
Judge Reinhardt was at a dermatology appointment on Thursday when he passed away suddenly.
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Reinhardt was first appointed to the position under President Jimmy Carter, making him one of the longest serving appellate judges. His death now leaves a vacancy on the 9th Circuit, giving President Trump the opportunity to add a true Conservative to the bench there for the first time in a generation.
When President Trump took office, he inherited more than a 100 vacancies in the Federal judiciary. Republicans in Congress had succeeded in blocking then-President Obama from filling the judge positions on his way out the door. Trump mentioned the vacancies in a recent campaign stop in Ohio.
“When I got in, we had over 100 federal judges that weren’t appointed,” Trump the crowd. “I don’t know why Obama left that. It was like a big, beautiful present to all of us. Why the hell did he leave that?”
“Maybe he got complacent,” Trump quipped.
The vacancy serves as a reminder of how Donald Trump’s Presidency can redefine the American judiciary. While most of the focus is usually placed on a President’s Supreme Court appointments, Appeals Court nominations are oftentimes more important because most cases never make it past the Appellate level.
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