“Confirmed Judges, Confirmed Fears” is a blog series documenting the harmful impact of President Trump’s judges on Americans’ rights and liberties. It includes judges nominated in both his first and second terms.
Trump Ninth Circuit judge Bridget Bade cast the deciding vote to strike down a voter-approved law in California calling for background checks of people who seek to purchase gun and rifle ammunition. Conservative Judge Jay Bybee, nominated by President George W Bush, dissented in the July 2025 decision in Rhode v Bonta.
What happened in this case?
In 2016, California voters approved a referendum calling for people who want to purchase ammunition for firearms to undergo background checks. The law took effect in 2019, and required such checks, which cost as little as $1, for each purchase of ammunition. Law enforcement considered the statute particularly important to deal with problems created by guns assembled through kits, which have no serial number, and guns purchased illegally.
Gun advocates filed a federal lawsuit challenging the law. A district court judge consolidated a hearing on a motion for a preliminary injunction against it and the trial on the merits, and permanently enjoined the law as violating the Second Amendment. The state appealed to the Ninth Circuit.
How did Trump judge Bade and the Ninth Circuit majority rule and why is the result harmful?
Trump Judge Bade joined a 2-1 opinion by George W Bush nominee Sandra Ikuta that affirmed the decision below and invalidated the background check law. Applying the Supreme Court decision in the Bruen case, the majority ruled that the statute “meaningfully constrained” the right to keep and bear arms, and that the state had failed to show that the law was “consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearms regulation.”
Conservative George W Bush nominee Jay Bybee strongly dissented. Precedent was clear, he explained, that since the law did not directly regulate the purchase or possession of firearms themselves, it could be protected by the Second Amendment only if it “meaningfully constrained” the right to bear arms, and the record demonstrated this was not the case. California’s “administration” of the law, he went on, has shown that “the vast majority of its checks cost one dollar and impose less than one minute of delay.” The majority’s view that this is sufficient to require the historical analysis mandated by Bruen, he concluded, has “broken with our precedent and flouted the Supreme Court’s guidance.”
The decision made possible by Trump judge Bade obviously harms California’s efforts to promote gun safety, and could well have similar effects in other states, particularly in the Ninth Circuit, which includes California, Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington. It also illustrates the importance of our federal courts to health, welfare and justice and the significance of having fair-minded judges on the federal bench.