LOS ANGELES, CA – Trump-appointed 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Lawrence VanDyke responded last Thursday to his colleagues’ decision to uphold the California state ban on large-capacity gun magazines in, according to the Los Angeles Times, a “highly unusual way” by posting a “dissent video” on YouTube of him handling firearms.
The LA Times detailed the contents of Judge VanDyke’s YouTube video, where VanDyke states, “I think anyone with a basic familiarity with firearms could show you that this attempted distinction is simply inconsistent with reality,” while dressed in his judicial robe with a gun mounted on the wall behind him.
The video, the LA Times writes, was quick to draw criticism, including from VanDyke’s colleagues as well as legal scholars. The video was deemed “wildly inappropriate,” with one scholar commenting that judges “shouldn’t strive to be influencers.”
Over the course of this video, VanDyke clarified it was “not to supplement the factual record that we are using to decide this case,” something the LA Times noted was outside of his jurisdiction as an appellate court judge.
Instead, VanDyke aims to provide “rudimentary understanding” as to why the majority opinion was incorrect in their conception of the facts, the LA Times writes.
The argument VanDyke is illustrating in the video and through his demonstration, said the LA Times, is a “slippery-slope argument….by his estimation, if the majority opinion is allowed to stand, more and more parts of firearms could be banned until the ability to effectively arm oneself in California is completely lost.”
On the other hand, the majority opinion written by Circuit Judge Susan P. Graber upholds the constitutionality of the ban exactly because it “restricts an especially dangerous feature of firearms…while allowing all other uses of those firearms,” reported the LA Times.
The unprecedented and bizarre response to the majority decision by VanDyke “was met with derision from his colleagues,” the LA Times said.
An appointee of President Bill Clinton, Judge Marsha S. Berzon, wrote a separate opinion condemning VanDyke’s response as “wildly improper,” noting the panel was “right to ignore” the video, and adding rules of the court do not allow it, the LA Times writes.
Along with Berzon, three other Clinton appointees and two President Obama appointees joined her in the separate opinion responding to VanDyke’s dissent video, noted the LA Times.
Associate professor of law at Pepperdine Caruso School of Law, Jacob Charles, “said he had never seen anything like VanDyke’s video before—and for good reason,” according to the LA Times.
The LA Times quoted Caruso stating, “In my opinion, it is beyond question inappropriate. I don’t think there’s any other way to characterize that than as performative activism…judges shouldn’t be striving to be social media influencers.”
