1. Lawrence James Christopher VanDyke was born on December 12,1972 and is an American lawyer and jurist serving as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit since 2020.
24 Facts About Lawrence VanDyke
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Lawrence VanDyke previously served as the solicitor general of Nevada from 2015 to 2019 and of Montana from 2013 to 2014.
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Lawrence VanDyke worked for his family's construction company and did graduate study at Montana State for the next three years, receiving a Master of Construction Engineering Management degree in 2000.
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Lawrence VanDyke then attended Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the Harvard Law Review and the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy.
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Lawrence VanDyke was in private practice at the law firm Gibson Dunn from 2005 to 2006, then served as a law clerk to judge Janice Rogers Brown of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 2006 to 2007.
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Lawrence VanDyke returned to Gibson Dunn from 2007 to 2012.
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From 2012 to 2013, Lawrence VanDyke was an assistant to the Solicitor General of Texas.
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Lawrence VanDyke was then appointed the Solicitor General of Montana but resigned in 2014, citing strain in the workplace.
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Lawrence VanDyke recommended signing on to other states' challenges to state and federal gun laws, co-wrote a brief supporting an Arizona law prohibiting abortions after 20 weeks, and recommended that Montana file a brief in a New Mexico case involving a photographer who refused to photograph a lesbian commitment ceremony.
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Lawrence VanDyke became Solicitor General of Nevada under Attorney General Adam Laxalt in 2015, where he served until 2019 when he became a deputy Assistant Attorney General for the United States Department of Justice Environment and Natural Resources Division.
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Since graduating law school, Lawrence VanDyke has been a member of the Federalist Society.
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On September 20,2019, President Donald Trump announced his intent to nominate Lawrence VanDyke to serve as a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
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Lawrence VanDyke received a "not qualified" rating from the American Bar Association.
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The ABA raised "concerns about whether Mr Lawrence VanDyke would be fair to persons who are gay, lesbian, or otherwise part of the LGBTQ community, claiming that "Mr Lawrence VanDyke would not say affirmatively that he would be fair to any litigant before him, notably members of the LGBTQ community.
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On October 30,2019, a hearing on Lawrence VanDyke's nomination was held before the Senate Judiciary Committee and it became contentious.
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Lawrence VanDyke stated generally that some of his personal views have changed since that time.
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Lawrence VanDyke said that his ABA evaluator told him that she was in a "hurry" and did not give him the opportunity to fully respond to concerns.
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The ABA's handling of Lawrence VanDyke was widely denounced by conservative commentators.
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Lawrence VanDyke received his judicial commission on January 2,2020.
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Lawrence VanDyke wrote a majority opinion holding that two California counties violated the Second Amendment when they shut down gun and ammunition stores in 2020 as nonessential businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Lawrence VanDyke criticized his court's approach to Second Amendment challenges as "exceptionally malleable".
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On September 28,2023, Lawrence VanDyke upheld Idaho's abortion law despite its lack of exceptions for medical emergencies.
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The en banc panel upheld the law, and Lawrence VanDyke accused the majority of "distrust[ing] gun owners and think[ing] the Second Amendment is a vestigial organ of their living constitution".
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Lawrence VanDyke later went on to record a video dissent to more easily show, as well as state, the reasoning for his dissent, with a focus on the insistence of the state that magazines were not an 'arm' protected by the Second Amendment and instead were an 'accessory' due to them being a part of a firearm that could be changed.