How Trump is reshaping one of the country’s most liberal courtsPBS Newshour, Aug 19, 2019
Planned Parenthood’s decision to withdraw Monday from a federal grant program aimed at family planning services is the result of a ruling from an unlikely source: the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The historically liberal court allowed a Trump administration rule blocking federal funding from organizations that refer patients for abortions to move forward, and Planned Parenthood chose to lose the money rather than stop the referrals.
The case is one signal that President Donald Trump’s judicial nominations may be shifting one of the nation’s most liberal courts further to the right, blunting what many consider his opponents’ most effective tool against administration policies.
In another ruling Friday, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit, which included a Trump appointee, scaled back a lower-court ruling to allow Trump’s asylum rules to go into effect in some parts of the country.
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Trump has already selected seven of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ 29 judges, and three more seats are awaiting nominations. Trump’s appointments have replaced three Democratic appointees, including Stephen Reinhardt and Harry Pregerson, who were widely viewed as two of the court’s most liberal judges.
The majority of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals judges were nominated by Democrats, so legal watchers say they do not expect the court’s decisions to shift dramatically. But each case is heard by a randomly selected three-judge panel. That means it is more likely that cases will be assigned to a panel with two Republican-appointees than in the past.
The court can still decide to give a case a “second look†by a larger, 11-judge panel, but that still does not guarantee a liberal outcome. In the abortion funding case, all three judges in the first hearing were Republican appointees. When it moved onto an 11-judge panel, seven of the judges were Republican appointees, including two Trump appointees.
More:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/planned-parenthood-funding-battle-highlights-trump-focus-on-courts
