Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) has filed a bill to break up the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals because its jurisdiction is too large, he said Wednesday on Fox News.
"We think breaking the circuit up, splitting it up so it's not so huge, unwieldy, is long overdue and that's what my bill will do," Sullivan said in the Fox News appearance.
The circuit contains Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington and the U.S. territories of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, according to the court's website.
In Sullivan's proposal, he said California, Hawaii, and the American territories would become their own circuit, and the rest of the nine states would be their own circuit.
"It's so big that they've undertaken these what I call 'fast food justice' procedural shortcuts that no other court uses, no other court in the country," Sullivan said.
"What we're focused on is access to justice," Sullivan added, noting that regardless of party affiliation, lawmakers should want quicker access to proceedings for their constituents.
President Donald Trump has taken issue with the Ninth Circuit over a Hawaii federal judge blocking Trump's travel ban. On April 26, he told the Washington Examiner he was "absolutely" looking into splitting up the circuit.
Legal experts addressed the issue on April 30 in the Washington Examiner that breaking up the circuit would not necessarily benefit Trump.
"The perennial proposal of breaking up the 9th Circuit would have zero impact on the current litigation," Josh Blackman, a South Texas College of Law professor, told the Examiner.
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