Lawrence VanDyke
Lawrence VanDyke has consistently held and advanced far-right views from a young age. He earned a theology degree from Bear Valley Bible Institute, whose doctrinal statement says that women should “assum[e] a submissive position.” While in law school, VanDyke interned at the Alliance Defending Freedom, a virulently anti-LGBTQ+ organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated as a hate group, and wrote a book review arguing that teaching creationism in public schools was constitutional.
VanDyke then began his legal career clerking for extremist former D.C. Circuit judge Janice Rogers Brown, who compared liberal democracy to slavery by the government. During his time at the Texas, Montana, and Nevada attorney general’s offices, VanDyke “placed a special emphasis on writing amicus briefs supporting gun rights and anti-abortion laws,” sought to invalidate the Obama administration’s expansion of the Clean Water Act, and sued to stop a Department of Labor rule that would have entitled 4 million more workers to overtime pay.
Since President Trump appointed him to the Ninth Circuit, VanDyke has inserted his harmful beliefs into his judicial opinions, most bizarrely in his dissent in Duncan v. Bonta, in which he attached an 18-minute video showing him handling, disassembling, and then reassembling several handguns. Overall, VanDyke is far too ideologically compromised to exercise the judicial independence and restraint required of a Supreme Court justice.
- Called “Arrogant” “Lazy” and “Ideologue” by the ABA. Ahead of Van Dyke’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing for his Ninth Circuit nomination, the American Bar Association (ABA) published a letter opposing his confirmation. After conducting extensive background research and interviews, the ABA found that VanDyke was “arrogant, lazy, an ideologue, and lacking in knowledge of the day-to-day practice” of the law. Further, the ABA asserted that VanDyke lacked several qualities essential to serving as a federal judge, including humility, an open mind, and a commitment to truthfulness. Appallingly, the ABA concluded that VanDyke was too ideologically biased to provide LGBTQ+ litigants with a fair chance at justice. Unfortunately, VanDyke’s disastrous tenure on the Ninth Circuit has proven the ABA’s worst fears were warranted.
- Lacks Judicial Temperament, Uses Vulgar and Offensive Language. In Olympus Spa v. Armstrong, VanDyke sparked severe backlash when he used vulgar and offensive language to attack the Ninth Circuit’s refusal to rehear a decision upholding a Washington public law that bars businesses from excluding transgender women. In his dissent, VanDyke callously asserted that the controversy was “a case about swinging dicks.” He went on to describe the majority’s decision as “woke judges’ willingness” to sacrifice constitutional rights “on the altar of ‘social progress.’”
VanDyke’s degrading and obscene dissent was widely condemned by others in the legal community, with 27 fellow federal judges releasing a statement calling his language “vulgar barroom talk.” These judges asserted that VanDyke’s dissent “undermin[ed] public trust in the courts.” VanDyke’s actions in Olympus Spa demonstrate that he is more concerned with using his platform as a federal judge to petulantly proclaim his ideological beliefs rather than serve as a neutral arbiter of justice.
