2011—Elevated by President Obama to the Ninth Circuit two months earlier, Mary H. Murguia still has damage to carry out as a federal district judge. In acquitting Elton Simpson of a charge of making a false statement involving international terrorism, Murguia does verbal somersaults to rule that the government did not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Simpson’s discussions about traveling to Somalia were sufficiently related to international terrorism:

It is true that the Defendant had expressed sympathy and admiration for individuals who “fight” non-Muslims as well as his belief in the establishment of Shariah law, all over the world including in Somalia. What precisely was meant by “fighting” whenever he discussed it, however, was not clear. Neither was what the Defendant meant when he stated he wanted to get to the “battlefield” in Somalia.

Some four years later, in May 2015, Elton Simpson will launch a jihadist attack in Garland, Texas.

2013—In the face of a federal statute stating that “no court shall have any jurisdiction to review … any judgment regarding the granting of relief under” specified provisions of immigration law, a Ninth Circuit panel holds (in Mamigonian v. Biggs) that the jurisdictional bar applies only to determinations made on discretionary grounds.

2024—In a bizarre ruling (in Catholic Charities Bureau v. Wisconsin Labor and Industry Review Commission), the Wisconsin supreme court rules by a sharp 4-to-3 divide that the Catholic Charities entity and four of its sub-entities in the Diocese of Superior, Wisconsin do not qualify for a statutory unemployment-tax exemption that is available to entities that are “operated primarily for religious purposes.” The majority rules that because Catholic Charities does not “attempt to imbue program participants with the Catholic faith nor supply religious materials to program participants or employees,” its activities are “primarily charitable and secular.” The statute’s “religious purposes” test is somehow not satisfied by Catholic Charities uncontested religions motivation.

In a comprehensive dissent, Justice Rebecca Grassl Bradley shreds the majority’s statutory analysis and argues compellingly that the majority “engages in religious discrimination and entangles the state with religion in violation of the First Amendment.”

In December 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court will grant Catholic Charities’ petition invoking the First Amendment. The case is pending.