Susan Yvonne Illston | |
|---|---|
 Illston in 2014 | |
| Senior Judge of theUnited States District Court for the Northern District of California | |
| Assumed office July 1, 2013 | |
| Judge of theUnited States District Court for the Northern District of California | |
| In office May 26, 1995 – July 1, 2013 | |
| Appointed by | Bill Clinton |
| Preceded by | Barbara A. Caulfield |
| Succeeded by | Vince Chhabria |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1948-06-24)June 24, 1948 (age 76) Tokyo,Japan |
| Education | Duke University (BA) Stanford University (JD) |
Susan Yvonne Illston (born June 24, 1948) is aseniorUnited States district judge of theUnited States District Court for the Northern District of California. She was nominated by PresidentBill Clinton and confirmed by theSenate in 1995. She assumedsenior status in 2013.
Illston was born inTokyo,Japan, was raised in the military and attended Fort Knox High School. She graduatedDuke University, receiving aBachelor of Arts in 1970, and she received aJuris Doctor fromStanford Law School in 1973.[1] Prior to her appointment, Illston served in private practice first as an associate, then as a partner, at Cotchett, Illston & Pitre inBurlingame,California from 1973 to 1995.[2]
On the recommendations of SenatorsBarbara Boxer andDianne Feinstein, Illston was nominated by PresidentBill Clinton on January 23, 1995 and confirmed by theSenate on May 25, 1995 byvoice vote, receiving her commission the following day.[3][4] She tooksenior status on July 1, 2013.
Sittingby designation of theNinth Circuit Court of Appeals, in 1999 Illston wrote the panel decision inDiLoreto v. Downey Unified School District Board of Education, 196 F.3d 958 (9th Cir. 1999), cert. denied, 529 U.S. 1067 (2000), which held that an athletic fence which a public high school made available for commercial advertising is a nonpublic forum from which religious messages could be excluded without violating theFirst Amendment.[5]
In February 2004, Illston ruled in321 Studios v. Metro Goldwyn Mayer Studios, Inc. that the company's software, which was intended, according to the company, to allow consumers to make backup copies ofDVDs by "circumventing" so-called "copy protection" methods, was illegal under Federal law. She issued aninjunction at the behest of several Hollywood studios and ordered321 Studios to stop selling their product. However, despite finding that the software violated Federal law, she ruled that copies made by consumers (of their own legally purchased DVDs) were, in fact, legal. She wrote in her opinion, "It is the technology itself at issue, not the uses to which the copyrighted material may be put...Legal downstream use of the copyrighted material by customers is not a defense to the software manufacturer's violation of the provisions [of copyright law]."[6]
In August 2006, Illston sentenced Patrick Arnold, a chemist who developed an undetectable performance-enhancing drug forBALCO, to three months in prison.[7]
In March 2009, Illston presided over aperjury case involvingBarry Bonds.[8]
In April 2009, Illston ruled that two students who were threatened with suspension by their community college, theCollege of Alameda, could sue the school for free speech infringement.[9]
In October 2009, Illston ruled in favor of environmental groups, including theCenter for Biological Diversity, that sued theU.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) over a 5,000 mile expansion ofoff-roading trails inCalifornia'sMojave Desert. Illston found that the BLM had violated its own regulations[10] when it designated the routes in 2006[11] without adequately analyzing the impacts on air quality, soils, plant communities and sensitive species such as the endangeredMojave fringe-toed lizard. Illston called the BLM's plan "flawed because it does not contain a reasonable range of alternatives" to limit damage to sensitive habitat and pointed out that the desert and its resources are "extremely fragile, easily scarred, and slowly healed."[12] The court also found that the BLM had failed to follow route restrictions established in the agency’s own conservation plan, resulting in the establishment of hundreds of illegal off roading routes during the past three decades.[10] Illston ruled that the plan specifically violated theFederal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976 (FLPMA) and theNational Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA).[11]
The Bureau of Land Management was required, as a result of the lawsuit by the Center for Biological Diversity, to prepare a new inventory of routes and to reconsider the routes that would be included in the revised network. That process concluded with a Record of Decision filed by the BLM in the Federal Register on October 4, 2019.[13] That Record of Decision expanded the West Mojave Route Network Project (WMRNP) by approximately 20% to 5997 miles. In response, the Center for Biological Diversity filed another lawsuit in September 2021 opposing the expansion of the network and the resulting degradation of the environment.[14] The new case was also heard by Judge Illston, who issued her decision on October 16, 2024. The result was similar to the result of the previous case. Judge Illston wrote in her opinion that "the Court concludes that the BLM’s 2019 OHV route network does not comply [with] the minimization criteria because the record does not affirmatively demonstrate how the BLM designated OHV routes with the objective of minimizing impacts on the desert tortoise, the Lane Mountain milk-vetch, and other resources, and because the BLM improperly relied on optional, post-designation 'mitigation' measures to satisfy its obligation to designate OHV routes that complied with the regulatory criteria."[15]
Illston in 2011 was the presiding judge inSony Computer Entertainment America LLC v.George Hotz, et al.,[16] in which Sony claimed that Hotz'sjailbreaking of the SonyPlayStation 3 violated theDigital Millennium Copyright Act.[17] She granted Sony permission to track as much information as possible about those who had seen a private YouTube video about the jailbreak and to read their comments, plus obtain access to IP addresses, accounts, and other details of visitors to sites run by Geohot. The access granted by Illston extended even to those who had not downloaded the jailbreak code.[18]
In a March 15, 2013, ruling Judge Illston granted petitioner's motion to set aside aNational Security Letter (NSL), ruling that the NSL's nondisclosure and judicial review provisions suffer from significant Constitutional infirmities.[19] The petitioner argued that the nondisclosure provision of statute 18 U.S.C. § 2709(c) was an unconstitutionalprior restraint and content-based restriction on speech.[20] The decision came in a lawsuit challenging a NSL on behalf of an unnamed telecommunications company represented by theElectronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).[21] The judge stayed her decision for 90 days to give the government the opportunity to appeal.[22][23]
in April 2020, Illston issued an order—ultimately overturned by the US Supreme Court—denyingSlack Technologies’ motion to dismiss a securitiesclass action complaint against it following a direct listing by the company.[24] The judge held that the plaintiff did not lack standing to pursue claims underSection 11 of theSecurities Act where the purchased shares were not traceable to the allegedly misleadingregistration statement, in the unique situation of a direct listing in which shares registered under the Securities Act become publicly tradeable on the same day that unregistered shares become publicly tradeable, even though the plaintiff could not show that the shares the plaintiff acquired were registered.[25] Illiston certified her ruling for interlocutory appeal, and the Ninth Circuit - with a divided panel - affirmed.[26] Dissenting, JudgeEric D. Miller argued that Sections 11 and 12 require a plaintiff to prove that he purchased securities registered under a materially misleading registration statement, something Pirani had not done, and cited a long line of lower court decisions that interpreted Section 11 as applying only to shares purchased pursuant to a registration statement.[26]
TheUnited States Supreme Court ultimately reviewed the case. It noted in its unanimous June 2023 decision inSlack Technologies, LLC v. Pirani, No. 22-200, 598 U.S. ___ (2023), that lower federal courts had held since the 1960s that liability under Section 11 of the Securities Act of 1933 attaches "only when a buyer can trace the shares he has purchased to a false or misleading registration statement."[26] It held that "because we think the better reading of the particular provision before us requires a plaintiff to plead and prove that he purchased shares traceable to the allegedly defective registration statement, we vacate the Ninth Circuit’s judgment holding otherwise."[26]
The case was remanded to the Ninth Circuit, which held in 2025 that because the plaintiff previously conceded that he could not make the required showing that the securities that he purchased were traceable to the particular registration statement alleged to be false or misleading, all of his claims failed, and the court consequently reversed and remanded the case with instructions to dismiss the complaint in full and with prejudice.[27]
On 20 August 2024, Illston granted a motion to unseal a list of shareholders of X Holdings Corp. (which ownsTwitter since the acquisition by Elon Musk). The unsealed document was published to the court's website.[28]
{{cite journal}}:Cite journal requires|journal= (help){{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
Media related toSusan Illston at Wikimedia Commons| Legal offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Judge of theUnited States District Court for the Northern District of California 1995–2013 | Succeeded by |
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
