Lawrence J. C. VanDyke
How Judge VanDyke rules, drawn from 56 signed orders. Every observation links to the order it came from.
About Judge VanDyke
Lawrence James Christopher VanDyke is a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Appointed by President Donald J. Trump, Judge VanDyke received a commission on January 2, 2020.
Judge VanDyke's practices and standing orders
The court's website lists no individual practices or standing orders of Judge VanDyke'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 VanDyke decides
Patterns drawn from this judge's own signed orders. Every observation links to the order it came from.
What persuades
In a removal-jurisdiction case, VanDyke applied the statute to the action actually challenged rather than the label attached to the claim. A request to halt execution of an existing removal order fell within Congress's express bar on review of the Attorney General's decision to execute such orders.
“The execution of his removal order is precisely what Matias challenges here.”
In a wrongful-foreclosure removal case, VanDyke confined the removal statute to parties named as defendants. Practical convenience could not justify a judge-made real-party exception that the text omitted and that created uncertainty about when an unnamed party's removal deadline would begin.
“If Congress meant to allow a ‘real party defendant in interest’ to remove an action on behalf of a named defendant, it could have written the statute that way.”
In a California indemnity case, VanDyke reconsidered an older circuit interpretation after later state appellate decisions uniformly rejected it. On state-law questions, the federal court's duty to apply current state law permitted departure from its prior prediction when subsequent state authority showed that prediction was wrong.
“Circuit precedent interpreting state law, therefore, ‘is only binding in the absence of any subsequent indication from the California courts that our interpretation was incorrect.’”
In a school-zone firearm prosecution, VanDyke combined a plausible statutory-license reading with constitutional avoidance, lenity, and the presumption of scienter. The state statute expressly claimed compliance with the federal exception, local officers said the conduct was lawful, and no prior decision supplied contrary notice.
“Our narrow conclusion results from the unique convergence of Metcalf’s plausible reading of Montana Code section 45-8-360, constitutional avoidance, the rule of lenity, and the absence of criminal notice.”
In his Pover dissent, VanDyke read the plan’s list of barred “class, collective or representative” suits contextually, treating neighboring words as defining the type of representative action the provision covered.
“A phrase is given more precise content by its association with neighboring words.”
In Detwiler, VanDyke found the employee’s religious-exemption pleading facially plausible and dissented from dismissal.
“But Detwiler pled with sufficient specificity to show her claim has facial plausibility, satisfying her minimal burden. The majority errs by concluding otherwise.”
In Brickman, VanDyke concurred under existing circuit precedent but disagreed with its reading of the word number in the autodialer definition.
“But I disagree with our precedent because it wrongly concludes that the word ‘number’ means the same thing in all instances where it appears in the TCPA’s definition of an autodialer.”
In Heckman, VanDyke concurred in the arbitration result and would have resolved it by holding that the Federal Arbitration Act did not govern the mass arbitration arrangement.
“But I would resolve this case by simply concluding that the Federal Arbitration Act (‘FAA’) just does not apply to the type of mass ‘arbitration’ contemplated by Live Nation’s agreements.”
Procedural preferences
In his Knife Rights rehearing dissent, VanDyke argued that automatically vacating a panel opinion upon en banc review can create incentives for a government defendant to amend the challenged law and moot the case before merits review.
“As I explained then, our court’s practice of automatically vacating panel opinions creates obvious perverse incentives for government defendants.”
In San Luis Obispo Coastkeeper, VanDyke joined the panel but emphasized the demanding standard for a mandatory preliminary injunction in a dispute involving several species.
“I write separately to emphasize the demanding standard that must be met before a district court may issue a mandatory preliminary injunction, a standard that becomes even harder to satisfy in cases like this one which involve the complicated interplay between different species.”
In Brown, VanDyke concurred in the judgment but declined to adopt a broader debt collection rule treating filing after service as a separate violation.
“I agree with the outcome and much of the reasoning of the majority opinion, but I write separately because the rule announced in Part III.B.3 of the majority’s opinion— ‘hold[ing] that when service occurs before filing, filing constitutes an independent violation of the FDCPA’—is an unnecessary conclusion that carries our circuit into the unknown without anticipating the intricacies future cases are bound to raise.”
Cautions
In a petition to confirm an arbitration award, VanDyke required the jurisdictional facts to appear on the petition itself. A court could not look through a zero-dollar award to the value of the underlying defamation dispute to satisfy the diversity amount in controversy.
“It is therefore controlled by Badgerow’s instruction that the facts establishing a jurisdictional basis must be present on the face of the petition to confirm the arbitration award.”
In his Theis dissent, VanDyke argued that student exposure alone does not automatically convert a public-school employee’s personal expression into government speech; he favored a specific, fact-intensive inquiry.
“Instead, a specific and fact-intensive inquiry is required to determine if a school employee’s speech is a personal expression or speech on behalf of the state.”
In his Trigueros Quizar dissent, VanDyke argued that accepting an immigration petitioner’s factual statement as true should not require the agency to disregard more persuasive contrary evidence.
“After today, the deem-true rule requires the agency not only to accept Trigueros’s statement as true, but also to allow that statement to override all evidence to the contrary.”
In a dissent from an en banc decision on firearm licensing, VanDyke proposed assessing restrictions by whether the regulated use is common nationally and whether the state rule is unusual among states. The en banc majority did not adopt his approach.
“Hawaii’s byzantine firearm-registration requirements are outliers. Ergo, Hawaii shouldn’t be allowed to enforce them.”
In Western Towboat, VanDyke partly dissented because he concluded Western preserved its contract argument about responsibility for insurance deductibles.
“But the majority is incorrect that Western waived the argument that under the tow agreement the parties agreed to hold each other harmless for any portion of the other’s insurance deductible.”
Signed rulings
A grounded sample of orders signed by this judge, with the verbatim dispositive language.
“For the reasons discussed below, we deny the petition for review.”
“We accordingly AFFIRM IN PART, REVERSE IN PART, and REMAND for proceedings consistent with this opinion and the relevant memorandum disposition.”
“Because the BIA did not abuse its discretion in reaching that conclusion, and that determination alone was sufficient to deny the petition ... we ... deny his petition for review.”
“For the reasons above, we AFFIRM the district court’s grant of summary judgment to Nationstar.”
“Because Webb's state law claims seek to impose the requirements of her retained water protocol in addition to Trader Joe's FSIS-required protocol, her claims are preempted. ... we affirm the district court's dismissal with prejudice.”
“AFFIRMED IN PART; REVERSED IN PART; REMANDED IN PART.”
“For these reasons, we reverse the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of the Trust, its denial of summary judgment to the Bank, and its dismissal of the Bank’s claims against the HOA, and remand for proceedings consistent with this opinion.”
“We therefore affirm the district court's grant of summary judgment to Paradise High School and Paradise Unified School District.”
“With jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. Section 1291, we affirm the district court's dismissal for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction.”
“The judgment of the district court denying Miller’s motion for partial summary judgment on DePaul’s due process claims is REVERSED AND REMANDED with instructions to dismiss those claims.”
“Therefore, the district court’s ruling on the matter is REVERSED and REMANDED for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”
“Reversing the district court's dismissal of a wrongful foreclosure action and remanding, the panel held that the district court erred in denying plaintiffs' motion to remand the action to the state court from which it had been removed to federal court by a party not named in the complaint.”
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