Lucy Haeran Koh was born on August 7,1968 and is an American lawyer serving as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
19 Facts About Lucy Koh
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Lucy Koh is the first Korean American woman to serve on a federal appellate court in the United States.
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Lucy Koh served as a California state court judge of the Santa Clara County Superior Court from 2008 to 2010.
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Lucy Koh's father was a veteran of the Korean War, where he fought Communist forces.
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Lucy Koh spent most of her childhood in Mississippi, where her mother was an academic at Alcorn State University.
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Lucy Koh spent parts of her young life in Maryland and Oklahoma.
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In 1986, Lucy Koh graduated from Norman High School in 1986 in Norman, Oklahoma.
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Lucy Koh then attended Harvard Law School, where she was a semi-finalist in the Ames Moot Court Competition and graduated in 1993 with a Juris Doctor.
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From 1993 to 1994, Lucy Koh worked for the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary as a Women's Law and Public Policy Fellow.
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From 1994 to 1997, Lucy Koh worked for the United States Department of Justice, first as a Special Counsel in the Office of Legislative Affairs and then as a Special Assistant to the Deputy Attorney General.
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From 1997 to 2000, Lucy Koh served as an assistant United States attorney in the US Attorney's Office for the Central District of California.
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In 2020, Lucy Koh presided over a case in which a coalition of local governments, activist groups, and American Indian tribes sued the Commerce Department over the Trump administration's intention to end the 2020 Census early.
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On February 25,2016, President Obama nominated Lucy Koh to serve as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, to the seat vacated by Judge Harry Pregerson, who assumed senior status on December 11,2015.
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On September 8,2021, President Joe Biden announced his intention to renominate Lucy Koh to serve as a circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
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Lucy Koh was unanimously rated "well qualified" for the circuit judgeship by the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary.
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At least one Republican senator accused her of being hostile to people of faith; Lucy Koh noted that she is herself a person of faith.
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Lucy Koh is the first Korean-American woman to serve as a federal appellate judge and the second Asian Pacific American woman to serve on the Ninth Circuit from California, after Jacqueline Nguyen.
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Lucy Koh received her judicial commission on December 14,2021.
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Lucy Koh is married to Mariano-Florentino Cuellar, the president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former justice of the California Supreme Court and professor at Stanford Law School.