Gonzalo P. Curiel

In 2006, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Curiel to the San Diego County Superior Court.[14][15] He held that position until his appointment to the federal bench.[7]

On November 10, 2011, President Barack Obama nominated Curiel to serve as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of California.[7] He replaced Judge Thomas J. Whelan, who had taken senior status. Curiel was rated "well qualified" by a substantial majority of the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary, which evaluates federal judicial nominees.[16]

Curiel received a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 28, 2012, which reported his nomination to the Senate on April 26, 2012, by voice vote. In the early hours of September 22, 2012, on what was officially still the legislative day of September 21, the Senate confirmed Curiel by voice vote. He received his commission on October 1, 2012. He assumed senior status on September 7, 2023.[3]

In February 2014, Curiel certified Tarla Makaeff v. Trump University as a class action case that alleged Trump University was "a basically fraudulent endeavor",[17] and he accepted residents of three states as members of that class.[18] In October 2014, Curiel certified Cohen v. Trump as another national class action against then-entrepreneur Donald Trump.[19][20] In March 2016, Curiel allowed Makaeff to withdraw her name from the first lawsuit, and the case was retitled Low v. Trump University.[17][21]

In May 2016, Curiel granted a request by The Washington Post for public release of certain Trump University documents and depositions that had been filed in the case.[17][22] Curiel scheduled a trial to begin in the Low case on November 28, 2016, in San Diego.[23] He had planned to start the trial in the summer of 2016, but postponed it until after the 2016 Presidential election because of concerns that jurors would be affected by a "media frenzy" if the trial took place before the election.[23]

In November 2016, after Trump had been elected president, his attorneys asked that the case be delayed until after Trump's inauguration, set for January 20, 2017. Curiel denied the request but urged the parties to pursue a settlement, and recruited District Judge Jeffrey T. Miller to facilitate settlement talks.[24] On November 18 a $25 million settlement of all three pending cases (Curiel's two class-action suits plus a suit filed by the attorney general of New York) was announced and was certified by Curiel.[25] Implementation of the settlement was delayed because one individual claimant wished to pursue a separate lawsuit. A district court and an appeals court rejected that individual's claim, and Curiel finalized the settlement in April 2018. Former students can now get a refund of up to 90% of the money they spent on courses.[26]

During the campaign Trump repeatedly criticized Curiel in campaign speeches and interviews, calling him a "hater of Donald Trump", saying his rulings have been unfair, and that Curiel "happens to be, we believe, Mexican, which is great. I think that's fine",[27] while suggesting that the judge's ethnicity posed a conflict of interest in light of Trump's proposal to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border.[1][17][23][28][29] Curiel wrote in court papers that Trump has "placed the integrity of these court proceedings at issue",[1][17][22] but is forbidden from responding publicly to Trump's claims in view of rules against public commentary by judges on active cases.[17]

Legal experts were critical of Trump's original attacks on Curiel, viewing them as racially charged, unfounded, and an affront to the concept of an independent judiciary.[30][31][32][33][34][35] On June 7, 2016, Trump issued a lengthy statement saying that his criticism of the judge had been "misconstrued" and that his concerns about Curiel's impartiality were not based upon ethnicity alone, but also upon rulings in the case.[36][37] In reply, Cato Institute fellow Nat Hentoff wrote that thus far in the case, Curiel had ruled in Trump's favor far more often than not, including granting his motion to delay the trial until after the 2016 presidential election, and concluded that "Donald Trump has an odd way of showing his appreciation for a trial judge who, as his attorney said, is just 'doing his job'."[38] In November 2017 at an appeals court hearing, one of Trump's attorneys said that Trump had changed his opinion of Curiel and now regarded his actions as a "textbook example of a district court properly administering a settlement".[26]

In April 2017 Curiel was assigned to hear the case of a 23-year-old man whose lawyers say he was deported to Mexico on February 18 by the Border Patrol despite being registered under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, having arrived in the United States from Mexico when he was 9 years old. The Department of Homeland Security says he was not deported and must have gone into Mexico from the United States voluntarily at some point. He was caught on February 19 trying to illegally cross the border into the United States from Mexico.[39][40]

Curiel also heard a case brought by the State of California and California Coastal Commission, a number of environmentalist groups, and U.S. Representative Raúl Grijalva (Democrat of Arizona) that challenged waivers issued in 1996 and 2005 that allowed the federal government to bypass some federal and state environmental laws to promote border security. These waivers were granted under a 1996 immigration law. Three separate lawsuits were initially brought, challenging the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's power to waive these laws to construct a border wall. Curiel consolidated these into a single case, In re Border Infrastructure Environmental Litigation.[41][42][43][44]

The plaintiffs argued that the waivers were ultra vires and not authorized by the 1996 immigration law; they also raised constitutional challenges grounded in the Nondelegation Doctrine, Take Care Clause, Presentment Clause, First Amendment and Tenth Amendment.[45][43] On February 27, 2018, Curiel granted summary judgment in favor of the Trump administration.[45][44]