Judge Edward Chen
Northern California U.S. District Court
Edward Milton Chen was born in January 1953 in Oakland, California. He earned his undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and his Juris Doctor from the UC Berkeley School of Law. He clerked for a Northern California U.S. District Court judge and a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals judge.
Chen was an associate at a law firm in San Francisco before becoming an ACLU staffing attorney. He was chosen as a U.S. magistrate judge by the Northern California U.S. District Court for an eight-year term.
President Barack Obama nominated him for district judge in August 2009. The Senate returned the nomination to the president multiple times. President Obama renominated Chen each time. The Senate confirmed him, and he received his judicial commission in May 2011.
In the News…
U.S. District Judge Edward Chen temporarily ruled in favor of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) holders from Venezuela against the Homeland Security secretary’s termination of the extension that had been provided by the previous administration. The termination would have ended work permits and deportation protections on April 7 for roughly 350,000 Venezuelans currently in the United States.
Judge Chen ruled that Secretary Kristi Noem’s termination of the TPS status “threatens to: inflict irreparable harm on hundreds of thousands of persons whose lives, families, and livelihoods will be severely disrupted, cost the United States billions in economic activity, and injure public health and safety in communities throughout the United States.”
He wrote that the government had not identified “real countervailing harm in continuing TPS for Venezuelan beneficiaries” and said plaintiffs were likely to succeed in showing that DHS’ actions “are unauthorized by law, arbitrary and capricious, and motivated by unconstitutional animus.”
Contact this Leader…
Did you pray for Judge Chen today? You can let him know at:
The Honorable Edward Chen
Northern California U.S. District Court
Phillip Burton Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse
450 Golden Gate Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94102
