Oregon nominee for 9th Circuit Appeals Court under fire for racial 'hostility' in college writings

Ryan Bounds, a federal prosecutor nominated to fill a seat on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, wrote opinion pieces as a student at Stanford University that derided multiculturalism on campus and expressed disdain for "race-focused groups," an advocacy group says in a new report that questions his fitness for the judgeship.

"Bounds's writings reveal strong biases that call into question his ability to fairly apply the law and to maintain confidence in the justice system's ability to dispense even-handed justice to all,'' the liberal Alliance for Justice said in the report.

Bounds, a politically conservative assistant U.S. attorney in Portland who now chairs the Multnomah Bar Association's equity, diversity and inclusion committee, disavowed the pieces in an email he sent Friday night to committee members.

Bounds, 44, said that the disadvantage of being nominated was "having the ill-considered, tone-deaf, and mortifyingly insensitive pronouncements of one's youth unearthed and scrutinized.''

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