A 9th Circuit judge is facing a misconduct investigation over a parking lot incident
A dust-up in an Idaho parking lot has prompted a judicial misconduct investigation into a member of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Judge Ryan D. Nelson, a Trump appointee and fierce defender of the president’s powers, was charged with aggravated battery and malicious destruction of property in an apparent altercation with another driver in Idaho Falls in late April.
Video of the collision appears to show Nelson sitting in a snowy parking lot in his gray Dodge Ram while another driver in an even larger pickup pulls up next to him. Nelson is parked at an angle. The second driver tries to get out. This video, published by the Idaho State Journal, shows an exchange of insults.
At one point, Nelson is seen grabbing another driver’s sunglasses off his forehead and hoisting them across the parking lot. After a while, he runs to the place where the shadows live and appears to crush them.
Nelson pleaded not guilty to two counts of affray. His attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
After reports of the incident surfaced in June, Chief District Judge Mary H. Murguia ordered an investigation into judicial misconduct — a charge that could subject Nelson to formal censure or other penalties.
Murguia then asked the country’s top judge, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, to remove the case from the 9th Circuit, a measure designed to protect judicial cooperation and ensure that the outcome is not tainted by personal bias.
“Judges working together all the time, so it wouldn’t be fair, and it would be difficult, and it wouldn’t be fair to collaborate,” said Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law.
On Wednesday, Roberts transferred the investigation to the 4th Circuit, which is 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 popularly liberal court.
A former general counsel for Melaleuca — an Idaho-based health care company that has come under fire from consumer advocacy groups for alleged multilevel marketing — Nelson ruffled feathers when he first came to the bench. He was the focus of intense criticism last year for his staunch support for the president’s military deployment.
At the time, the Justice Department argued that the president could override the Sedition Act to send troops onto America’s streets over the objections of local leaders.
The 9th Circuit upheld that argument last June, allowing Trump to maintain control of the California National Guard after the president sent troops to quell protests over immigration enforcement in LA.
In October, Nelson and fellow Trump appointee Bridget S. Bade took similar control of Oregon troops sent to Portland over state and local opposition there.
“He really directed this team the way he wanted, and he succeeded,” said Tobias about the decision.
Concurring, the judge wrote that the impugned law not only gave Trump the power to mobilize the military against civilians, but that his reasons for doing so were “unreviewable” by federal courts, calling the president’s decision “absolute.”
This decision brought out the opposition that existed at the time. In a rare show of dissent, 9th Circuit Judge Jay Bybee, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote a lengthy statement urging the appeals court to review the Oregon decision with a larger panel.
“The President’s findings cannot be the final word,” Bybee wrote, a direct reference to Nelson’s concurrence. “Absolute sincerity is not required here.”
Ultimately, the Supreme Court rejected the National Guard’s advocacy, agreeing with the Georgetown scholar’s reading of the law, which concluded that it could be used in exceptional circumstances, after active duty troops had already been deployed.
Nelson is due back in court in Idaho on July 16.
