Today's an unusual day indeed.
The Ninth Circuit publishes this today. It's a dissent from the refusal to take a case en banc. Nothing totally unusual about that, right?
Except it's a tax case. Not the usual subject of an en banc call. And not even a tax case that affects a huge number of "regular" people: It's about a Ninth Circuit opinion last year that upheld a Tax Court ruling that related entities must
share the cost of their employee stock compensation. Yet that opinion sees a huge volume of amici and a spirited dissent for the refusal to hear the case en banc. Not your usual degree of attention to a tax opinion.
The opinion is unusual is one other way as well: the huge number of recusals. How many? Not one. Not two. Not three.
Ten different Ninth Circuit judges recuse themselves from the en banc call: Judges
McKeown, Wardlaw, Bybee, Bea, Watford, Owens,
Friedland, Miller, Collins, and Lee.
So it's an opinion that may affect at least a nontrivial number of people in a particular socioeconomic group. Including but not limited to Ninth Circuit judges.
