Ikuta was nominated to the Ninth Circuit by President George W. Bush on February 8, 2006 to fill the seat vacated by Judge James R. Browning, who took senior status in 2000. Previously, Carolyn Kuhl had been nominated to that position, but she had been filibustered by Senate Democrats for a year until December 2004 when she withdrew her nomination. Ikuta was voted unanimously out of the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 26, 2006, and confirmed 81–0 by the U.S. Senate on June 19, 2006. She was the sixth judge appointed by Bush to the Ninth Circuit. Ikuta worked alongside her former boss, Judge Alex Kozinski, for whom she clerked. He testified on her behalf at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on her nomination.
Notable cases
Ikuta's first published opinion on the Ninth Circuit was United States v. Baldrich, issued on December 27, 2006. She wrote the Dukes v. Wal-Mart dissent in the Ninth Circuit, with reasoning that largely ended up being adopted by the Supreme Court. In May 2017, Ikuta dissented when the narrowly divided en banc circuit found that the United States District Court for the Southern District of California's policy of indiscriminately shackling criminal defendants in all pretrial hearings violated the Constitution's Due Process Clause. In March 2018, the circuit's judgment was vacated by the unanimous Supreme Court of the United States.
On July 12, 2019, in City of Los Angeles V. Barr,the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit overturned a nationwide injunction issued in 2018, thus upholding preferential treatment in awarding community policing grants to cities that cooperate with immigration authorities. In the opinion, Judge Ikuta wrote, "Cooperation relating to enforcement of federal immigration law is in pursuit of the general welfare, and meets the low bar of being germane to the federal interest in providing the funding to "address crime and disorder problems, and otherwise... enhance public safety... one of the main purposes for which” the grant is intended. In her dissent, Judge Kim Wardlaw wrote, " decision to implement both the illegal immigration focus area and the Cooperation Certification is foreclosed by the text, structure, and purpose of the Community Policing Act."
On February 24, 2020, Ikuta wrote the majority opinion upholding Trump's domestic gag rule, which was decided by a vote of 7 to 4. The majority acknowledged they knew that the gag rule's main purpose was to stop abortions, it nevertheless remained constitutional. The majority relied on the Supreme Court precedent Rust v. Sullivan. Ikuta was joined by Senior Judge Leavy and Judges Bybee, Callahan, M. Smith, Miller, and Lee.
Judge Ikuta is an active member of The Federalist Society, a conservative and libertarian organization which holds panels, debates and discussions and she has been known to attend their national events.
