Anthony Devos Johnstone
How Judge Johnstone rules, drawn from 19 signed orders. Every observation links to the order it came from.
About Judge Johnstone
Anthony Devos Johnstone is a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Appointed by President Joseph R. Biden, Judge Johnstone received a commission on May 5, 2023.
Judge Johnstone's practices and standing orders
The court's website lists no individual practices or standing orders of Judge Johnstone's own (checked October 11, 2026), so the court's local rules and general orders are the place to look (court page ↗).
Standing orders for every case in this court
Orders the court applies to all of its cases, whichever judge has them, as published on the court's website (checked October 11, 2026).
How Judge Johnstone decides
Patterns drawn from this judge's own signed orders. Every observation links to the order it came from.
What persuades
Allows a complaint to proceed without evidentiary proof that ordinarily belongs in discovery or later merits stages.
“plaintiffs are generally not expected to provide evidence in support of their claims at the pleading stage.”
Keeps policy disputes outside rational-basis review when the challenged rule remains rationally related to a legitimate interest.
“those debates are not the concern of a court conducting rational basis review.”
At the pleading stage, he treated alleged exclusive broker agreements and technical barriers to sharing public listings as enough to let antitrust counterclaims proceed; proof of those allegations remains for later stages.
“CREXi plausibly alleges that CoStar has monopoly power in the relevant markets and engaged in anticompetitive conduct by entering de facto exclusive agreements and constructing technological barriers.”
In Ninth Inning, Johnstone reversed the exclusion of the subscriber classes’ antitrust experts because disputes that could impeach their opinions did not alone make the opinions unreliable under Rule 702.
“But opinions are neither unfounded nor unreliable merely because they are impeachable.”
Procedural preferences
In Bercy v. City of Phoenix, he held that the plaintiff's hostile work environment claim accrued before her bankruptcy petition and belonged to the estate.
“her claim belongs to the estate.”
Resists dismissal sanctions for insufficient trade-secret detail before discovery permits the parties to refine the disputed secrets.
“a DTSA trade-secret claim will rarely be dismissible as a discovery sanction in a situation like the one here because the fact question of ‘reasonable particularity’ should be resolved on summary judgment or at trial.”
Cautions
In Arizona Attorneys for Criminal Justice v. Mayes, he rejected the facial challenge to the victim contact limit as framed and did not reach the limit's constitutionality.
“we do not reach the constitutionality of the Victim Contact Limit.”
Recognizes that equitable hardship cannot authorize a court to confer citizenship contrary to governing law.
“courts lack the equitable power to remedy the government’s errors by granting Moncada citizenship.”
In Youth 71Five, he separated the grant program’s own nondiscrimination condition from limits on independently funded speech, ordering preliminary relief only for the latter.
“Therefore, we reverse the district court’s denial of 71Five’s motion for a preliminary injunction and direct the district court to enter an order enjoining enforcement of the Rule as to initiatives that do not receive grant funding from the Division.”
In a separate concurrence, he questioned copyright instructions that ask juries to decide substantial similarity from an unreviewable overall impression rather than a legal standard.
“But a jury’s job is to find facts, not feelings.”
In a separate concurrence, he distinguished the restitution procedure decided by the panel from a broader post-judgment theory that remained unresolved.
“The opinion does not address whether § 3771(d)(3) alone allows victims to file post-judgment motions asserting restitutionary rights when § 3664(d)(5) does not apply.”
Signed rulings
A grounded sample of orders signed by this judge, with the verbatim dispositive language.
“AFFIRMED IN PART, REVERSED IN PART, and REMANDED.”
“AFFIRMED in part; REVERSED in part; REMANDED for further proceedings.”
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