The Biggest Judicial Losers: The Liberal Ninth Circuit Keeps Racking Up Losses at the Supreme Court

The Wall Street Journal editorializes:

The Supreme Court is heading to the final days of its term, and so far the biggest loser is once again the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The famously liberal appellate court has logged more reversals than any other circuit, having lost 10 of 11 cases.

For liberals who want to believe this is merely a case of conservative Justices overruling liberal rulings, look again. In its 11 cases the Ninth Circuit managed to draw a total of only 16 votes from the nine Justices. Eight of the 10 reversals were unanimous, and the decision to overturn the circuit was joined seven times by Justice Stephen Breyer, nine times by Justice Sonia Sotomayor and 10 times by Justices Elena Kagan and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The latest reversal came Thursday in Pom Wonderful v. Coca Cola, with an 8-0 ruling that the Ninth Circuit erred in accepting Coca-Cola’s argument that federal regulations precluded Pom’s claim it was harmed when Coke labelled a drink to highlight the presence of pomegranate juice. The ruling was “incorrect,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote of the Ninth Circuit. “There is no statutory text or established interpretive principle to support” the appellate court’s contention. “Quite to the contrary.”

Two of this term’s Ninth Circuit reversals were jurisdiction cases, concerning the Constitution’s Due Process Clause and the restraints it puts on forum shopping by plaintiffs attorneys. In Daimler AG v. Bauman, Justice Ginsburg rebuked the Ninth Circuit’s view that California “is a place where Daimler may be sued on any and all claims against it, wherever in the world the claims may arise.” “That formulation,” she added, “is unacceptably grasping.”

The Supreme Court tends to take cases it feels may have been wrongly decided, and other circuits have also had decisions reversed. There are also times when the Justices overrule an appeals court and get it wrong— William Rehnquist’s 1988 opinion in Morrison v. Olson upholding the independent counsel statute comes to mind.

But the frequency and breadth of the Ninth’s Circuit’s defeats suggest that many of its 29 active judges are willfully ignoring precedent and law to do as they please. Maybe they should all have to do refresher terms as Supreme Court clerks.