“A bill to amend title 28, United States Code, to modify the composition of certain judicial circuits, and for other purposes.”
No CRS summary available for this bill.
This section states congressional findings that the Ninth Judicial Circuit of the United States has a population exceeding 67,000,000 and covers over 40 percent of the landmass of the United States, compared to the Eleventh Judicial Circuit's population of just above 37,000,000, and that Western circuits should be modernized to reflect population growth and regional nuances.
This section reconfigures the Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Circuits by reassigning states among them. It sets the number of circuit judges at 15 for the Eighth Circuit, 21 for the Ninth Circuit, and 16 for the Tenth Circuit. It designates St. Louis, Kansas City, Rapid City, and St. Paul as places for the Eighth Circuit and Denver, Oklahoma City, Phoenix, and Salt Lake City for the Tenth Circuit. It reassigns active and senior judges to the new circuits based on their stations on the day before enactment, applies the precedents of the former Eighth Circuit to Alaska, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming and of the former Tenth Circuit to Arizona and Nevada, ends the binding effect of former Ninth and Tenth Circuit precedents in the states leaving those circuits, and transfers pending appeals and proceedings to the new circuits unless already submitted for decision.