A Judge’s Vulgar Dissent Is a Loss for Everyone: Noah Feldman

March 20, 2026, 11:30 AM UTC

A recent opinion by a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit is a contender for the most vulgar piece of judicial writing in the 300-plus-year history of recorded judicial decisions in the English language.

The opinion in Olympus Spa v. Andretti — a dissent from the 9th Circuit’s decision not to rehear a case involving a potential conflict between transgender rights and free exercise rights — opens with this astonishing sentence: “This is a case about swinging d*cks.”

Except Judge Lawrence VanDyke, an appointee of President Donald Trump, didn’t use an asterisk.

VanDyke’s use of ...

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