By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
When U.S. District Judge Roger T. Benitez retired earlier this month after serving 22 years on the bench in San Diego, he left a legacy of Second Amendment-friendly rulings which included striking down California’s ban on so-called “assault weapons” and “large-capacity magazines.”
According to the Times of San Diego, Judge Benitez will work part time as an “arbiter and mediator” for a company known as ADR Services.
Benitez came to the U.S. as a child from Cuba. He was nominated to the bench by former President George W. Bush in 2004, and in 2017, he went on semi-retired senior status, as detailed in a profile published this week by the San Diego Union-Tribune.
Now 75, Judge Benitez has become something of a folk hero among Second Amendment activists, not just in California but throughout the entire Ninth U.S. Court circuit, which spans the western U.S., Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.
On the other side, anti-gunners have sometimes reviled Judge Benitez. California Gov. Gavin Newsom once sneered that Benitez was a “wholly owned subsidiary of the gun lobby and the National Rifle Association.” The San Joaquin Valley Sun noted in its report of his retirement that his pro-rights rulings had “reportedly fueled a local rule change in the Southern District of California to prevent similar gun control cases from being assigned to him in 2023.”
One newspaper biography noted that he got a rare “not qualified” label from the American Bar Association when he was nominated to the federal bench by President Bush in 2003. Considering his rulings on Second Amendment cases, that ABA classification would be vigorously criticized today by gun owners throughout the western U.S.
Benitez and a brother came to the U.S. as part of “Operation Peter Pan” following the Cuban revolution. According to a biography at Wikipedia, Benitez earned an Associate of Arts degree from Imperial Valley College in 1971 and a Bachelor of Arts degree from San Diego State University in 1974. He earned a Juris Doctor degree from the Western State University College of Law, San Diego campus in 1978.
Prior to becoming a judge, he worked in private practice in Imperial County, California from 1978 to 1997. From 1997 to 2001, he served as a judge on the California Superior Court and also worked as an instructor at Imperial Valley College in 1998 and 1999.
His retirement garnered lots of media attention, primarily because of his Second Amendment rulings, which struck down several California gun laws.
