1. The district court is a trial court within the Ninth Circuit; the appellate court is one step higher on the ladder and oversees all individual districts. 2. the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the appellate court to which the case proceeds now. (The district court is a trial court within the Ninth Circuit; the appellate court is one step higher on the ladder and oversees all individual districts.) 3. The Court’s reputation arguably derives from its transformation under President Jimmy Carter. While Carter was the only the fourth president to make no appointments to the Supreme Court, he did appoint 15 people to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals , out of 23 judges total at the time. (It’s since expanded.) 4. Stephen Reinhardt, a Carter appointee who’s still serving, is widely viewed as one of the most liberal appellate judges on federal courts. He wrote the Ninth Circuit’s opinion striking down California’s same-sex marriage ban Proposition 8 in 2012, ruled that the Second Ame