The United States Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit is "the most overturned court in the country." 
 
 Fox News host Sean Hannity says it’s no surprise that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against President Donald Trump and his executive order on immigration. 
 
 "We have both been predicting for days now the 9th Circuit — the most liberal court of appeals, the most overturned court in the country — it would act this way," Hannity said on his show Feb. 9, speaking with a guest. 
 
 Several states have sued the Trump administration over its executive order that temporarily blocks immigration and travel from seven countries in the Middle East and Africa. A federal trial court judge in Seattle ruled Feb. 3 that the federal government could not enforce the executive order while the case is pending. 
 
 So lawyers for the administration appealed that decision to the 9th Circuit, which hears cases from most of the western United States and Alaska and Hawaii. On Feb. 9, a panel of three judges ruled unanimously to affirm the Seattle judge’s decision. (The court didn’t rule on whether the executive order is legal. That will happen later.) 
 
 It’s possible the administration will try to appeal their case again, this time to the Supreme Court. Right after the judges handed down their decision, Trump tweeted, "SEE YOU IN COURT, THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE!" 
 
 As Hannity noted, the 9th Circuit has a reputation for being liberal. But we wondered if he was correct when he said the Supreme Court overturns more cases from the 9th Circuit than any other appeals court in the country — the implication being that the 9th Circuit is out of step with the Supreme Court. 
 
 In our research, we found that the 9th Circuit has a higher-than-average reversal rate, but not the highest. Additionally, experts told us that counting reversals doesn’t necessarily say much about the quality or substance of the 9th Circuit’s work. 
 
 The numbers 
 
 To evaluate this claim, we turned to SCOTUSBlog’s Supreme Court statistics archive, specifically their Circuit Scorecards, which track how often the Supreme Court justices agree or disagree with the lower court decisions. 
 
 The Supreme Court hears cases from the 50 state courts and 13 federal appeals courts, known as circuit courts. The cases that the Supreme Court chooses to take on are often disputed among the lower courts, complex, and problematic, so there’s a reasonable chance that the Supreme Court will decide that the lower court’s decision was wrong. 
 
 In fact, the Supreme Court reversed about 70 percent of cases it took between 2010-15. Among cases it reviewed from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, it reversed about 79 percent. 
 
 The 9th Circuit’s reversal rate is higher than average, but it’s not the absolute highest among the circuit courts. That distinction goes to the 6th Circuit, which serves Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky and Tennessee, with an 87 percent average between 2010-15. The 9th Circuit is in third place. 
 
 6th Circuit - 87 percent; 11th Circuit - 85 percent; 9th Circuit - 79 percent; 3rd Circuit - 78 percent; 2nd Circuit and Federal Circuit - 68 percent; 8th Circuit - 67 percent; 5th Circuit - 66 percent; 7th Circuit - 48 percent; DC Circuit - 45 percent; 1st Circuit and 4th Circuit - 43 percent; 10th Circuit - 42 percent. 
 
 We also found that the 9th Circuit never had the highest reversal rate in any individual term between 2004-15. (That’s the farthest back we could go.) 
 
 A spokesperson for Hannity pointed us to a 2014 article in National Review titled, "Ninth Circuit Leading the Pack for ‘Most Reversed.’ " But the evidence presented in the article does not support the headline. 
 
 So Hannity’s claim that the 9th Circuit is the "most overturned court in the country" is incorrect. 
 
 The Supreme Court only hears a handful of cases from each circuit each year, so the rate of reversal is highly variable, said Jonah Gelbach, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a statistician. In 2014, for instance, the 2nd Circuit had a reversal rate of 100 percent, which sounds pretty bad until you find out that the Supreme Court only heard one case from the 2nd Circuit that entire season. 
 
 The 9th Circuit is by far the largest circuit. In the 12 months leading up to March, 31, 2015, just under 12,000 cases were filed in the 9th Circuit — more than 4,000 more than the next-largest circuit, the 5th Circuit. Despite that gigantic docket, the Supreme Court heard just 11 cases from the 9th Circuit in 2015, reversing eight. 
 
 This means the Supreme Court generally reverses far less than 1 percent of all the cases the 9th Circuit (and other circuits) decide. 
 
 "Given the small numbers of cases involved, it can be difficult to draw any serious conclusions from such statistics about the quality of the courts involved," Gelbach said. "Having said that, the 9th Circuit does seem to consistently have a high reversal rate over time." 
 
 It’s possible that the sheer size of the 9th Circuit, as well as some of its procedures, cause it to produce more "outlier decisions," which are cases the Supreme Court always reverses, than other circuits — leading to a higher reversal rate, said University of Pennsylvania law professor Kermit Roosevelt. 
 
 Roosevelt said there might have been a time in the past when the 9th Circuit was considerably more liberal than the Supreme Court, stemming from the fact that Democratic President Jimmy Carter didn’t get the opportunity to appoint a Supreme Court justice, though he did appoint several judges to the 9th Circuit. 
 
 Today, the 9th Circuit might still have the highest number of Democratic appointees of any appeals court, but there’s been enough turnover in the past few decades that it’s not as much of an outlier, Roosevelt said. 
 
 Our ruling 
 
 Hannity said the 9th Circuit is "the most overturned court in the country." 
 
 While the 9th Circuit has a higher than average reversal rate among cases it sends to the Supreme Court, it has not had the highest rate since at least 2004 (the oldest data point we could find). 
 
 Even if it did, experts told us that the massive size of the 9th Circuit compared to the handful of cases it sends to the Supreme Court every year make reversal rates an imperfect measure of the quality of the 9th Circuit’s decisions. More broadly, experts say this statistic is a poor way of comparing courts. 
 
 We rate Hannity’s claim False. ||||| President Donald Trump also suggested that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is biased against him and his policies. | Getty Trump attacks judiciary for blocking order on sanctuary cities 
 
 President Donald Trump accused the “outrageous” 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Wednesday of being “semi-automatic” with rulings against his administration. 
 
 “Everybody immediately runs to the 9th Circuit,” Trump complained in an interview with the Washington Examiner. “And we have a big country. We have lots of other locations. But they immediately run to the 9th Circuit. Because they know that's like, semi-automatic.” 
 
 Story Continued Below 
 
 Trump said he is “absolutely” considering proposals to split up the three-judge panel, insisting that “there are many people that want to break up the 9th Circuit.” 
 
 Earlier on Wednesday, the president renewed his attacks on the nation’s judiciary, blaming the 9th Circuit for the ruling by a federal district court judge that blocked his administration’s move to deny federal funding to so-called sanctuary cities. 
 
 “First the Ninth Circuit rules against the ban & now it hits again on sanctuary cities-both ridiculous rulings. See you in the Supreme Court!” Trump tweeted Wednesday morning. 
 
 “I’m never surprised by the 9th Circuit,” Trump told a reporter later Wednesday during a signing ceremony for an unrelated executive order. “As I said: We’ll see them in the Supreme Court.” 
 
 Judge William Orrick, who handed down Tuesday’s injunction, is a U.S. district court judge based in San Francisco and does not sit on the 9th Circuit, although that is the next court that would hear the case should the Trump administration appeal the decision. Some observers consider all federals courts in the states where the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has jurisdiction to be collectively the 9th Circuit. 
 
 he ruling was panned by the White House, which released a statement from press secretary Sean Spicer’s office declaring that “today, the rule of law suffered another blow, as an unelected judge unilaterally rewrote immigration policy for our Nation.” 
 
 “This case is yet one more example of egregious overreach by a single, unelected district judge,” the White House statement continued. “Today’s ruling undermines faith in our legal system and raises serious questions about circuit shopping.” 
 
 Before Wednesday’s tweets, Trump’s most recent tirade against the judicial branch was also targeted at the 9th Circuit, which upheld a district court’s stay that blocked his executive order banning immigrants from certain Muslim-majority nations from entering the U.S. The 9th Circuit has yet to hear arguments on Trump's revised travel ban. Those arguments are slated for May 15. 
 
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 Trump also suggested that the 9th Circuit is biased against him and his policies, tweeting in subsequent posts that “Out of our very big country, with many choices, does everyone notice that both the ‘ban’ case and now the ‘sanctuary’ case is brought in the Ninth Circuit, which has a terrible record of being overturned (close to 80%). They used to call this ‘judge shopping!’ Messy system.” 
 
 In an interview Wednesday morning on Fox News, Spicer was critical of the federal district judge's ruling to block Trump’s sanctuary cities order. By basing his decision in part on rhetoric from Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Spicer said, Orrick had stepped outside the bounds of what should have been considered. “The idea that any judge or any jurisdiction would not be wanting to help make sure that we can protect our citizens runs counter to, frankly, what we should all be looking for,” Spicer said. 
 
 “Do you think the 9th Circuit’s got it in for the White House?" Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer asked Spicer. 
 
 “Well, I don’t know that they have it in for the White House,” he replied. “They have a horrible record of interpreting that law. And that’s just a fact.” 
 
 Nolan D. McCaskill contributed to this report. ||||| A federal judge halted President Trump's executive order that would withhold federal funds from jurisdictions that don't cooperate with immigration authorities, on April 25. He called the administration's position on the order "schizophrenic." (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post) 
 
 When a long list of comments from President Trump, his surrogates and his spokesmen shows up in a federal court ruling, it’s fair to say it can only mean one thing: a constitutionally questionable executive order is about to get a judicial smackdown. 
 
 That was true in March, when federal judges in Hawaii and Maryland suspended Trump’s travel ban, saying the administration had showed a clear animus toward Muslims, despite government lawyers’ claims to the contrary. 
 
 And it was true Tuesday, when U.S. District Judge William H. Orrick of California temporarily froze Trump’s executive order on sanctuary cities, ruling that a case could be made that it violated the Constitution. 
 
 [Trump blasts federal court ruling that blocks his ‘sanctuary city’ order] 
 
 Trump’s order, signed Jan. 25, threatens to cut off funding from local governments that refuse to cooperate with immigration authorities. Santa Clara County and the city of San Francisco challenged the order, arguing, among other things, that the president doesn’t have the power to withhold federal money. Orrick found the plaintiffs were likely to succeed on all their claims, as The Washington Post reported. 
 
 San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera praised the ruling by a U.S. District judge in San Francisco that blocked President Trump's executive order that sought to withhold federal funds from so-called sanctuary cities. (Reuters) 
 
 The 49-page ruling focused largely on an all-too-familiar theme for the young administration: the consequences of bragging and bluster by Trump and top administration officials. 
 
 Just like the judges who ruled on Trump’s travel ban, Orrick homed in on the vast discrepancies between what government lawyers defending the sanctuary cities order argued in court and what administration officials said about it in public. 
 
 In court, the government tried to make the case that the order doesn’t actually do anything, at least not at the moment, because the administration has yet to define what exactly a sanctuary city is or threaten any particular jurisdiction with a loss of funds. It was their way of convincing the judge to toss out the lawsuit on the grounds that no city or county has yet suffered any harm. 
 
 But in public, administration officials boasted about how the order would force sanctuary cities to their knees, singling out particular places. The order described in court as essentially an empty shell was portrayed in news conferences, briefings and television interviews as a powerful tool to protect the public from dangerous undocumented immigrants being shielded by wayward cities and counties. 
 
 It was that gap that disturbed Orrick. 
 
 In his ruling, the judge pointed to a February interview between Trump and former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, in which Trump called the order “a weapon” to use against cities that tried to defy his immigration policies. 
 
 “I don’t want to defund anybody. I want to give them the money they need to properly operate as a city or a state,” Trump said in the interview. “If they’re going to have sanctuary cities, we may have to do that. Certainly that would be a weapon.” 
 
 The judge also cited news conferences in which Attorney General Jeff Sessions threatened to “claw back any funds” awarded to a city that violated the order. 
 
 And the judge brought up remarks by White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who said in no uncertain terms that “counties and other institutions that remain sanctuary cities don’t get federal government funding.” 
 
 On top of that, the judge said, Trump and Sessions had repeatedly held up San Francisco as an example of the supposed dangers sanctuary cities pose to ordinary, law-abiding citizens because of the killing there of Kathryn Steinle in July 2015, allegedly by a man deported five times. 
 
 It was more than enough to show the intent of Trump’s order, Orrick wrote. 
 
 But government lawyers sang an entirely different tune. 
 
 According to Orrick, the government contended that the order was merely an example of Trump using the “bully pulpit” to “highlight a changed approach to immigration enforcement” — in essence, something much more benign than what Trump and company had described. 
 
 The argument was lost on the judge, who ridiculed the government’s position as “schizophrenic.” 
 
 “If there was doubt about the scope of the Order, the President and Attorney General have erased it with their public comments,” Orrick wrote. 
 
 “Is the Order merely a rhetorical device,” he added, “or a ‘weapon’ to defund the Counties and those who have implemented a different law enforcement strategy than the Government currently believes is desirable?” 
 
 The ruling continued: “The statements of the President, his press secretary and the Attorney General belie the Government’s argument in the briefing that the Order does not change the law. They have repeatedly indicated an intent to defund sanctuary jurisdictions in compliance with the Executive Order.” 
 
 If all that sounds familiar, it’s because other federal judges reached similar conclusions about the administration’s credibility in lawsuits challenging Trump’s travel ban. 
 
 In March, judges in Hawaii and Maryland issued rulings that temporarily halted parts of the executive order, which seeks to bar new visas for people from six Muslim-majority countries. In both cases, judges found that what government lawyers said in court about the ban being religiously neutral didn’t line up with remarks from Trump and some of his closest advisers, who had previously called for a “Muslim ban.” The administration’s intent was obvious, the judges said. 
 
 “Plainly-worded” statements by Trump and his surrogates “betrayed the Executive Order’s stated secular purpose,” one judge wrote, using language strikingly similar to Orrick’s. 
 
 As long as the administration continues to issue broad executive orders, it should expect to have statements by its top officials to come up in court, said Jayashri Srikantiah, an immigration law professor at Stanford Law School. 
 
 “It’s hard to imagine not seeing more of these kinds of legal challenges,” she said. “The president is the president and the attorney general is the attorney general, and we have to take seriously what they say about an executive order with such sweeping implications.” 
 
 President Trump has threatened to go after sanctuary cities, which provide protections for illegal immigrants. Chicago announced on Aug. 6 they plan to sue the Trump administration over threats to withhold public safety grant money from sanctuary cities. This is how other state and local governments with sanctuary policies have responded. (Claritza Jimenez/The Washington Post) 
 
 The Trump administration has vowed to fight rulings on the travel ban and sanctuary cities. 
 
 In a series of tweets Wednesday, Trump vowed that the White House was ready to bring the case to the Supreme Court and blasted the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which was part of legal decisions blocking Trump’s travel restrictions on several Muslim-majority countries. 
 
 “First the Ninth Circuit rules against the ban & now it hits again on sanctuary cities — both ridiculous rulings. See you in the Supreme Court!” Trump wrote. 
 
 Orrick is a federal district judge in San Francisco. He does not serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, although those judges would review his decisions. 
 
 In an earlier statement, the White House took aim at Orrick, saying his ruling “unilaterally rewrote immigration policy for our nation.” 
 
 “This case is yet one more example of egregious overreach by a single, unelected district judge,” the White House statement said. 
 
 The ruling puts the executive order on hold while the judge weighs the full evidence in the case. At issue is whether the order violates the Constitution by giving the president spending powers reserved for Congress and by infringing on state sovereignty by “commandeering” local officials to enforce federal immigration laws. 
 
 White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said the government’s lawyers were reviewing their options. 
 
 “It’s the 9th Circuit going bananas,” he told reporters Tuesday. “The idea that an agency can’t put in some reasonable restriction on how some of these monies are spent is going to be overturned eventually, and we’ll win at the Supreme Court level at some point.” 
 
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 Texas lawmaker on hunger strike in protest of ‘sanctuary city’ bill ||||| Tweet with a location 
 
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– President Trump went after what appears to be his least favorite court in the nation Wednesday in the wake of a setback on his sanctuaries cities executive order. In a series of tweets, Trump complained about the Ninth Circuit federal court, which previously froze his travel ban. "Does everyone notice that both the 'ban' case and now the 'sanctuary' case is brought in the Ninth Circuit, which has a terrible record of being overturned (close to 80%)," he wrote. (He's right on the latter stat, per PolitiFact.) Both rulings are "ridiculous," he wrote, adding, "See you in the Supreme Court!" On Tuesday, Judge William Orrick issued a temporary freeze on Trump's executive order. Orrick doesn't sit on the Ninth Circuit court but on the Northern District of California court. That's within the Ninth's jurisdiction, however, and any appeals would end up in the Ninth, notes Politico. In his ruling, the judge cited the words of the president and his aides in suggesting that the idea of the White House withholding money from cities that don't enforce his immigration polices is unconstitutional, notes the Washington Post. He noted that in an interview with Bill O'Reilly, Trump referred to the penalty as a "weapon," while spokesman Sean Spicer stated that "counties and other institutions that remain sanctuary cities don’t get federal government funding." Attorney General Jeff Sessions made similar comments. Justice Department lawyers argued that cities wouldn't be greatly affected and that the order was merely an enforcement of current law, but Orrick wrote, “If there was doubt about the scope of the order, the president and attorney general have erased it with their public comments," per the New York Times. Only Congress, not the president, can make such decisions about federal funding, he wrote.