Supreme scorecard: Another losing year for the 9th Circuit

By Kimberly Atkins The Daily Record Newswire Some Supreme Court watchers say the U.S. Supreme Court has rarely met a 9th Circuit opinion that it wouldn't love to overturn. This past term, that trend seems to show little signs of abating. According to the Los Angeles Times, the Court reversed or vacated decisions from the appellate court covering the nation's western states a whopping 73 percent of the time. And while that percentage is on par with past terms, lately the justices of the Supreme Court has been increasingly willing to sharply criticize the reasoning of the west-coast based federal appellate judges, the Times points out. But one 9th Circuit judge, Judge Stephen Reinhardt - who has been a target of the Supreme rebukes on more than one occasion - pointed out that the Court's justices often take aim at each other, so he wasn't taking it personally. ''If anything, it's a compliment. I get treated like the others on the [Supreme] Court,'' he told the Times. Published: Thu, Jul 28, 2011