9th Circuit judge appointed by Trump faces misconduct inquiry over parking lot incident
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- Judge Ryan D. Nelson, a Trump appointee on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, was charged with misdemeanor battery and malicious destruction of property in late April.
- Video of the incident appears to show Nelson getting into an altercation with another driver in a parking lot in Idaho.
- Nelson has pleaded not guilty to the charges. He also faces an inquiry into judicial misconduct.
A dust-up over a parking spot in Idaho has prompted a judicial misconduct inquiry into a member of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Judge Ryan D. Nelson, a Trump appointee and fierce defender of presidential power, was charged with misdemeanor battery and malicious destruction of property in connection with an apparent spat with another driver in Idaho Falls in late April.
Video of the confrontation appears to show Nelson idling in a snowy strip mall parking lot in his gray Dodge Ram when another driver in an even larger pickup pulls in beside him. Nelson is parked at an angle. The second driver struggles to get out. The footage, published by the Idaho State Journal, shows that an exchange of expletives ensued.
At one point, Nelson appears to snatch the other driver’s sunglasses from his forehead and heave them across the parking lot. Moments later, he runs to the spot where the shades landed and appears to stomp on them.
Nelson pleaded not guilty to a pair of misdemeanors in connection with the altercation. His lawyer did not immediately respond to request for comment.
After reports of the incident surfaced in June, Chief Circuit Judge Mary H. Murguia ordered an inquiry into judicial misconduct — a charge that could land Nelson with an official reprimand or other penalty.
Murguia then asked the country’s top judge, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, to take the case out of the 9th Circuit, a procedural move to protect the judges’ working relationships and ensure the outcome is untainted by personal bias.
“The active judges interact all the time, so it wouldn’t be fair, and it would be awkward, and it wouldn’t be good for collegiality,” said Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law.
On Wednesday, Roberts moved the inquiry to the 4th Circuit, headquartered in Richmond, Va.
Nelson was among the first and most controversial of Trump’s first-term appointees to the 9th Circuit, as the president moved aggressively to drag the famously liberal court rightward.
A former general counsel for Melaleuca — an Idaho wellness company that has drawn criticism from consumer advocacy groups for alleged similarities to multilevel marketing — Nelson ruffled feathers when he first arrived on the bench. He was the focus of sharp criticism last year for his hard-line support of the president’s domestic military deployments.
At the time, the Department of Justice argued that the president could sidestep the Insurrection Act to send armed troops into American streets over the objection of local leaders.
The 9th Circuit agreed with that argument last June, allowing Trump to retain control of the California National Guard after the president deployed troops to quell protests over immigration enforcement in L.A.
In October, Nelson and fellow Trump appointee Bridget S. Bade ruled the same held true for Oregon troops deployed to Portland over state and local objections there.
“He really steered that panel the way he wanted it, and he won,” Tobias said of the decision.
In a concurrence, the judge wrote that not only did the contested statute empower Trump to mobilize soldiers against citizens, but that his justification for doing so was “unreviewable” by the federal courts, calling the president’s decision “absolute.”
The ruling drew immediate and impassioned dissent. In a rare show of division, fellow 9th Circuit Judge Jay Bybee, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote a lengthy statement urging the appellate court to review the Oregon decision with a larger panel.
“The President’s findings cannot be the last word,” Bybee wrote, an apparent direct reference to Nelson’s concurrence. “Absolute fealty is not required here.”
Ultimately, the Supreme Court struck down the National Guard mobilizations, agreeing with a Georgetown scholar’s reading of the statute, which held it could only be invoked in extraordinary circumstances, after active duty troops were already deployed.
Nelson is expected back in court in Idaho on July 16.
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