The folks at SCOTUSBLOG recently posted a helpful chart of how the various federal circuits fared before the Supreme Court last year (PDF here). Once again, the Court granted certiorari in more Ninth Circuit cases (18) than cases from any other circuit (the next highest was the Sixth Circuit, with 7). The Court reversed or vacated 15 of those cases, or 83.33%. But this reversal rate was not the highest among the circuits. For five circuits - the First (1 case), Third (3 cases), Seventh (3 cases), DC (2 cases), and Federal (3 cases)- the Court reversed 100% of the cases for which it granted cert.

More interestingly, perhaps, out of the 17 cases that the Georgetown Supreme Court Institute labeled “high-profile” (PDF here) only 3 of them came from the Ninth Circuit, and the Supreme Court reversed two of them (Garcetti and Marshall) while upholding one (O Centro Espirita). [Sorry: Gonzales v. Oregon]The other circuit with three “high profile” cases was the Sixth, and it fared exactly as well: one reversal, one vacated and remanded, and one affirmance.

So once again it’s not correct - as such - to say that the Ninth Circuit is the “most reversed appellate court in the country” or some such thing. True, in terms of raw numbers, the Ninth Circuit got more reversals than any other single Circuit. But in percentage terms, it’s in the middle of the pack. And in high profile cases, the Ninth Circuit was indistinguishable from the Sixth Circuit last year.