1969—“Now is the time for Helter Skelter,” declares Charles Manson, triggering two nights of vicious killing by the “Manson Family” in Los Angeles. Some 2½ years later, in its own rampage (see This Day for Feb. 18, 1972), the California supreme court will void the death sentences that had been imposed on Manson and four other Family members.
2019—Federal district judge Arenda L. Wright Allen rules (in Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board) that a school board’s policy of assigning students to restrooms based on their biological sex violated the rights of a female student who identified as male under both the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and the federal statute known as Title IX.
(One year later, a divided Fourth Circuit panel will affirm Judge Allen’s ruling, and in June 2021 the Supreme Court will deny the school board’s petition for certiorari.)
2024—A three-fer for the Ninth Circuit!
In his majority opinion for a divided Ninth Circuit panel last Friday, Judge Ronald Gould rules (in Parker v. BNSF Railway Co.) that the district court applied the wrong legal standard when it determined that a railway company did not unlawfully fire an employee in retaliation for his refusal to violate a safety rule. In a withering dissent, Clinton appointee Susan Graber condemns Gould’s “new, confusing, nonsensical, and unsupported legal standard.”
In another divided ruling (in United States v. Osorio-Arellanes), a panel rules that a man convicted on murder and related charges in connection with the death of a border patrol agent did not receive effective assistance of counsel. In dissent, Obama appointee Andrew Hurwitz objects that the majority “plows significant new doctrinal ground” and does so on direct appeal, even though the Supreme Court “has counseled that ‘few ineffective-assistance claims will be capable of resolution on direct appeal.’”
In yet another divided ruling (in United States v. Valdivias-Soto), a panel majority holds that an alien charged with illegally re-entering the United States could challenge his removal order even though he had satisfied only one of the three conjunctive requirements set forth in a federal statute. In her dissent, Judge Sandra Ikuta explains that the Supreme Court in a unanimous 2021 opinion by Justice Sotomayor “made clear that meeting each of these statutory requirements is mandatory.” She points out that Palomar-Santiago “overruled a long line of Ninth Circuit cases” and objects that the panel opinion “revives this discredited precedent.”