Patrick Bumatay

On October 15, 2019, President Trump nominated Patrick Bumatay to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, for the seat held by Carlos Bea, who will be taking senior status. He is the first Filipino-American and second openly gay person nominated to the federal bench by President Trump.

Bumatay – just 41 years old — is being nominated over the objections of both of California’s senators. In fact, Bumatay has no judicial experience and limited experience as an appellate lawyer, but was nominated because he is a reliable ideologue. He worked as an associate at Morvillo Abramowitz in New York for two years and has worked as a line prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California for just five years – where he has only tried eight cases to verdict. He has extremely limited appellate experience; in his words, he has “drafted several appellate briefs.” He was not even a member of the U.S. Attorney’s Office Appellate Section until March 2019, notably five months after President Trump first announced his intent to nominate him to be an appellate judge.

Read more on Bumatay’s background.