Why Trump’s Second-Term Agenda Could Hinge on the Court He Hates the Most

Once again, an incoming Trump White House is likely to clash with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. But the court in San Francisco has changed since 2017.

On Monday, President-elect Donald J. Trump will return to the White House with a raft of boundary-pushing executive orders expected to curtail immigration, hasten deportations, and unleash oil and gas drilling, among other efforts.

On the opposite side of the country, an old adversary awaits him: the famously liberal U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, where progressive lawyers repeatedly persuaded a court dominated by judges nominated by Democratic presidents to stymie much of his agenda during his first term.

But this time, Mr. Trump’s team is more prepared for legal battle. The incoming White House team has had years to plan for the fights that are sure to take place in the circuit’s headquarters, a 120-year-old Beaux-Arts courthouse in downtown San Francisco. And their arguments could receive a warmer reception, now that 10 of the appeals court’s 29 judgeships have been filled with Mr. Trump’s own nominees.

Even before Mr. Trump’s first-term appointments, the court was beginning to shed its identity as a bastion of liberal jurisprudence, according to Jeremy Fogel, a retired federal judge who served in the Northern District of California. “The court has really changed,” he said. “It’s not the old Ninth.”

The Ninth Circuit is the largest of the country’s 12 regional appeals courts in terms of judges, population and square miles. Its sprawling jurisdiction covers nine Western states, including the technology hub of Silicon Valley and more than 500 miles of the southwestern border, areas where Mr. Trump’s policy plans could loom large.

Most of the states within the Ninth Circuit have Democratic governors and attorneys general, making the court a crucial referee for state challenges to policies from any Republican White House. California alone filed more than 100 suits during Mr. Trump’s first term, when Democratic attorneys general from Western states won a number of victories in the circuit that slowed or even stopped some of Mr. Trump’s agenda.