Lucy Koh
Lucy Haeran Koh (born August 7, 1968) is a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. She is the first Korean American woman to serve on a federal appellate court in the United States. She is a former United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. Early life and education. Born on August 7, 1968, in Washington, D.C., Koh was the first member of her family to be born in the United States. Her mother, a refugee from North Korea, had escaped  the country at the age of ten after walking two weeks to South Korea. Her father was a veteran of the Korean War, where he fought communist forces. Koh spent most of her childhood in Mississippi, where her mother was an academic at Alcorn State University. She also spent parts of her young life in Maryland and Oklahoma. In 1986, Koh graduated from Norman High School in 1986 in Norman, Oklahoma. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard College in social studies in 1990 and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School in 1993. Professional career. From 1993  until 1994, Koh worked for the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary as a Women's Law and Public Policy Fellow. From 1994 until 1997, Koh worked for the United States Department of Justice, first as a Special Counsel in the Office of Legislative Affairs (19941996) and then as a Special Assistant to the United States Deputy Attorney General (1996–1997). From 1997 until 2000, Koh served as an Assistant United States Attorney in the Office of the United States Attorney for the Central District of California. From 2000 until 2002, she worked as a Senior Associate at Wilson Sonsini  Goodrich & Rosati, a Palo Alto, California law firm. From 2002 until 2008, Koh worked as a litigation partner at the Silicon Valley office of the law firm McDermott Will & Emery representing technology companies in patent, trade secret and commercial civil matters. In January 2008, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Koh a judge on the Santa Clara County Superior Court, a position she held until becoming a U.S. District Judge in 2010. Federal judicial service. District court service. On January 20, 2010, President Barack Obama nominated Koh on the recommendation of California Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein to a seat  on the United States District Court for the Northern District of California vacated by judge Ronald M. Whyte, who assumed senior status in 2009. On March 4, 2010, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to move her nomination to the full Senate. The Senate confirmed Koh in a 90–0 vote on June 7, 2010. She received her commission on June 9, 2010. Her service on the district court terminated on December 15, 2021, after being confirmed to the appellate court. Expired nomination to court of appeals under Obama. On February 25, 2016, President Obama nominated Koh to serve as a United  States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, to the seat vacated by Judge Harry Pregerson, who took senior status on December 11, 2015. On July 13, 2016, a hearing on her nomination was held before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary. On September 15, 2016, her nomination was reported out of committee by a vote of 13–7. Her nomination expired on January 3, 2017, with the end of the 114th Congress. President Donald Trump appointed Daniel P. Collins to the same seat in 2019. Renomination to court of appeals under Biden . On September 8, 2021, President Joe Biden announced his intention to renominate Koh to be a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. On September 20, 2021, her nomination was sent to the Senate. President Biden nominated Koh to the seat to be vacated by Judge Richard Paez, upon confirmation of a successor. On October 6, 2021, a hearing on her nomination was held before the Senate Judiciary Committee. During her hearing, Koh was criticized by Republican senators for her decisions related to religious rights during the COVID-19 pandemic, which Senator Josh  Hawley described as "deeply troubling". On October 28, 2021, her nomination was reported out of committee by a 13–9 vote. On December 9, 2021, the U.S. Senate voted 51–38 for cloture on Koh's nomination. On December 13, 2021, the U.S. Senate confirmed Koh in a 50–45 vote. Koh is the first Korean-American woman to serve as a federal appellate judge and the second Asian Pacific American woman to serve on the Ninth Circuit from California, after Jacqueline Nguyen. She received her commission on December 14, 2021. Notable cases as a district court judge. Koh has presided over litigation  including "Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co.", High-Tech Employee Antitrust Litigation, FTC v. Qualcomm (finding antitrust liability for conduct in licensing standard-essential patents, later reversed), and multi-district litigation, including the Yahoo and Anthem data breaches and Apple and Google privacy litigation. In 2020, Koh presided over a case in which a coalition of local governments, activist groups, and American Indian tribes sued the commerce department over early completion of the 2020 census. She issued a ruling that ultimately resulted in extending the once-a-decade count from September 30 to October 15. In "Tandon v. Newsom", Koh  ruled that California could ban small religious gatherings in homes as a COVID-19 mitigation tactic. The Ninth Circuit affirmed Koh, but the Ninth Circuit's ruling was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, who ruled that California's restriction on religious gatherings in private homes was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court indicated that it was the "fifth time the Court has summarily rejected the Ninth Circuit's analysis of California's COVID restrictions on religious exercise." Personal life. Koh is married to Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar, the President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former California Supreme Court Justice  and Stanford University law professor. They have two children.