US demotes judge who ruled for key rancher against Feds

The U.S. government has downgraded a judge who had ruled in favor of a Nevada rancher and against the Feds. Reno judge Robert Clive Jones, appointed by President George W. Bush in 2003, has repeatedly clashed with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals not only on the rancher case but on the gay marriage issue. Jones is being relegated to what is called “senior status,” making him a part-time judge. In a decades-long dispute between the government and the E. Wayne Hage family’s Pine Creek Ranch near Tonopah, Jones had ruled in favor of the rancher. The case is well known in the West among property rights advocates who charge the government “exercises a heavy hand” in relations with those who make their livelihood off the land, a report in the Las Vegas Review-Journal said. At issue was whether Hage, who is now deceased, and his son, Wayne Hage, who is currently defending the case, had grazed cattle on federal land without authorization. Jones ruled in favor of the Hages and the appeals court overturned the decision, citing Jones’s bias. In a separate opinion that is not published, the appeals court reversed contempt citations Jones made against the Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service employees, the Review-Journal reported. On April 19, Chief U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro in Nevada assigned the Hage case to herself...more