Judge
Lawrence
VanDyke
of
the
Ninth
Circuit,
is
an
unqualified
hack.
The
ABA
noted
as
much
when
it
rated
him
“not
qualified”
upon
his
nomination,
calling
him
“arrogant,
lazy,
an
ideologue,
and
lacking
in
knowledge
of
the
day-to-day
practice
including
procedural
rules.”
In
response,
the
second
Trump
administration
banned
the
ABA’s
input
on
judicial
qualifications.
He
has
since
spent
his
tenure
confirming
their
prescience
with
a
string
of
unhinged
and
juvenile
dissents
that
have
compared
his
colleagues
to
criminals,
insulted
them
as
“possessed,”
and
prompted
pointed
rebukes
from
his
own
court.
In
Olympus
Spa
v.
Armstrong,
a
discrimination
case
involving
a
women
only
spa
that
extended
its
ban
to
pre-operative
transgender
women
in
violation
of
state
law,
VanDyke
authored
a
dissent,
which
opens
thusly…
This
is
a
case
about
swinging
dicks.
Maybe
it’s
just
me,
but
it
feels
as
though
something
subtle
changed
when
the
intellectual
lodestar
of
the
conservative
movement
shifted
from
William
F.
Buckley
to
Kid
Rock.
Other
conservative
judges
on
the
panel
wrote
more
substantive
dissents,
managing
to
avoid
the
phrase
“swinging
dicks”
while
laying
out
a
vision
of
First
Amendment
religious
protection
that
would
allow
business
owners
to
discriminate
on
the
basis
of
sex.
The
phrase
also
doesn’t
really
make
sense
to
the
extent
“swinging
dicks”
is
a
colloquialism
for
aggressive,
ego-driven
men
embarrassing
themselves
in
childish
displays
of
dominance.
In
a
sense,
this
is
a
case
about
swinging
dicks,
but
it
describes
exactly
one
person
in
this
entire
dispute,
and
it’s
the
total
dick
who
typed
it
into
his
dissent
to
get
this
kind
of
attention
in
the
first
place.
VanDyke’s
stream
of
consciousness
dump
reads
sort
of
like
Ulysses
meets
CPAC
meets
severe
concussion
patient,
careening
from
its
crude
opening
into
calling
his
colleagues
“woke
judges,”
who
are
“complicit”
in
harming
women
and
girls,
invoking
President
Trump
and
Asian
American
discrimination
(neither
of
which
have
anything
to
do
with
the
case),
and
vomiting
up
an
Establishment
Clause
theory
and
a
private
club
exemption…
arguments
of
dubious
value
at
any
rate,
but
also
arguments
the
spa
never
bothered
to
raise
anyway.
Judge
McKeown’s
majority
opinion,
by
contrast
hewed
carefully
to
the
record.
The
spa
owners
never
challenged
the
state’s
discrimination
law,
but
rather
sued
state
officials
claiming
that
the
law’s
enforcement
was
discriminatory.
As
Judge
McKeown
explains,
“The
Spa
simply
did
not
challenge
the
statute
itself,
and
it
is
not
our
role
to
rewrite
the
statute.”
Without
taking
out
the
statute
itself,
the
burden
on
religious
exercise
was
incidental
to
the
regulation
of
conduct.
But
Judge
McKeown
also
authored
a
separate
statement
joined
by
26
fellow
judges,
including
the
Chief
Judge.
It
reads,
in
relevant
part:
The
American
legal
system
has
long
been
regarded
as
a
place
to
resolve
disputes
in
a
dignified
and
civil
manner
or,
as
Justice
O’Connor
put
it,
to
“disagree
without
being
disagreeable.”
It
is
not
a
place
for
vulgar
barroom
talk.
The
statement
goes
on
to
note
that
Van
Dyke’s
language
“makes
us
sound
like
juveniles,
not
judges”
and
“undermines
public
trust
in
the
courts.”
Two
additional
judges
filed
a
separate
statement
expressing
Judge
McKeown’s
sentiment
more
tersely:
Regarding
the
dissenting
opinion
of
Judge
VanDyke:
We
are
better
than
this.
Are
we
though?
There
are
51
active
and
senior
judges
on
the
Ninth
Circuit.
As
impressive
as
it
is
to
get
29
judges
to
join
together
to
rebuke
a
colleague,
that
means
22
judges
remained
silent.
They
didn’t
have
to
agree
with
the
substance
of
the
majority
to
sign
onto
a
statement
telling
VanDyke
to
cut
the
crap
and
act
like
the
federal
judge
he
was
never
qualified
to
be.
The
Judge
Owens
statement
gave
those
judges
12
simple,
wholly
partisan-free
words
to
sign
onto
if
they
wished!
The
fact
of
the
matter
is
that
the
other
22
judges
approve
of
this.
For
every
crass,
undignified
conservative
out
there
jockeying
for
clicks
like
VanDyke,
10-20
more
hang
back
posturing
as
“serious”
Republicans
while
giggling
softly.
They
are
not
actually
serious
and
they
do
not
actually
see
a
problem
with
any
of
this.
They
enjoy
keeping
their
hands
clean
while
privately
cheering
on
the
Republican
Party’s
descent
into
the
gutter.
They
don’t
care
that
their
more
polite
dissents
end
up
next
to
low
brow
vulgarity
because
at
the
end
of
the
day,
VanDyke’s
just
saying
what
they
can’t
bring
themselves
to
say
out
loud.
VanDyke’s
opinion
uses
the
word
complicit…
well,
this
is
what
complicity
looks
like.
Unfortunately,
the
descent
will
continue
to
accelerate.
When
Donald
Trump
calls
Leonard
Leo
a
sleazebag,
he’s
not
just
earning
The
Onion
meme,
he’s
declaring
independence
from
the
Federalist
Society’s
decades
long
mission
of
putting
respectability
lipstick
on
this
reactionary
pig.
This
administration
doesn’t
need
well-heeled
right-wing
intellectuals
—
too
many
of
them
honor
their
oaths
to
the
administration’s
detriment
—
it
needs
swinging
dick
goons
willing
to
move
the
idiocracy
influencer
culture
into
courthouses.
With
the
quiet
approval
of
a
lot
of
those
supposedly
higher
minded
conservatives.
(Opinions
available
on
the
next
page…)
Joe
Patrice is
a
senior
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at
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the
Law
and
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Like
A
Lawyer.
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