1992—By order of a trial court, the sponsors of the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade in Boston are required to allow the Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston to participate in their parade. In 1994, in an error of judicial passivism, the Massachusetts supreme court rules that the parade is not an exercise of First Amendment rights and that compelling the parade organizers to comply with state law banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation did not raise any significant First Amendment issue. In 1995, in Hurley v. Irish-American Gay Group of Boston, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously reverses: “The selection of contingents to make a parade is entitled to [First Amendment] protection.”
2009—President Obama makes his first federal appellate nomination as he selects district judge David F. Hamilton for a Seventh Circuit seat. Among the distinctions in the judicial record of the former ACLU activist are an extraordinary seven-year-long series of rulings (ultimately reversed by the Seventh Circuit) obstructing Indiana’s implementation of its law providing for informed consent on abortion; a reckless invocation of substantive due process to suppress evidence of violation of drug laws (also reversed by the Seventh Circuit); a ruling barring Indiana’s House of Representatives from permitting invocations that refer to “Christ” but permitting invocations by Muslim imams that refer to “Allah” (reversed, for lack of standing, by the Seventh Circuit); and a reputation among criminal defense lawyers as the most lenient judge in the district. All of which, of course, leads the New York Times to proclaim Hamilton a “moderate”!
2020—In a divided panel ruling (in Pakdel v. City of San Francisco), the majority opinion of Ninth Circuit judge Michelle T. Friedland holds that a takings challenge is “unripe” because plaintiffs failed to avail themselves of a previously existing opportunity to apply for an exemption. But as Judge Carlos T. Bea argues in dissent, the government’s action is final and therefore ripe for review, and the majority is instead importing into the takings context a requirement that plaintiffs exhaust state remedies—a requirement that the Supreme Court had rejected just the previous year.
Some months later, nine judges will dissent from the Ninth Circuit’s denial of en banc review.
In June 2021, the Supreme Court, without any registered dissent, will summarily reverse the Ninth Circuit’s ruling.