Vince Chhabria | |
|---|---|
 Chhabria in 2022 | |
| Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California | |
| Assumed office March 7, 2014 | |
| Appointed by | Barack Obama |
| Preceded by | Susan Illston |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Vince Girdhari Chhabria November 27, 1969 San Francisco, California, U.S. |
| Education | University of California, Santa Cruz (BA) University of California, Berkeley (JD) |
Vince Girdhari Chhabria (born November 27, 1969) is an American lawyer and jurist who is a United States district judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. He was appointed in 2014 by President Barack Obama. Chhabria was formerly a deputy city attorney at the San Francisco City Attorney's Office.
Early life and education
Chhabria was born in 1969 in San Francisco to a Sindhi immigrant father from Mumbai, India[1] and a French Canadian mother, born in Quebec.[2]
Chhabria graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1991 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in politics. From 1992 to 1995, he worked as a legislative assistant and campaign staffer for U.S. Representative Lynn Woolsey. He then attended the UC Berkeley School of Law, graduating in 1998 with a Juris Doctor degree and Order of the Coif membership.[3][4]
Career
He served as a law clerk to Judge Charles Breyer of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, from 1998 to 1999. He clerked for Judge James R. Browning of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, from 1999 to 2000.
In 2001, he worked as an associate at the law firm of Keker & Van Nest, LLP. From 2001 to 2002, he clerked for Justice Stephen Breyer of the United States Supreme Court.
From 2002 to 2004, he worked as an associate at the law firm of Covington & Burling, LLP.
From 2005 to 2013, he served in the San Francisco City Attorney's Office, finally as deputy city attorney for government litigation and as the co-chief of appellate litigation.[5][6]
Federal judicial service
On July 25, 2013, President Barack Obama nominated Chhabria to serve as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, to the seat vacated by Judge Susan Illston, who assumed senior status on July 1, 2013.[5] On January 16, 2014, his nomination was reported out of committee by a 13–5 vote.[7] On March 5, 2014, the United States Senate invoked cloture on his nomination by a 57–43 vote.[8] His nomination was confirmed later that day by a 58–41 vote.[9] He received his judicial commission on March 7, 2014.[6][3][10] Chhabria was the first Indian-American judge to be appointed in California.[11][12]
Notable rulings
On October 3, 2016, the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation appointed Chhabria to preside over the coordinated and consolidated pretrial proceedings for all product liability lawsuits filed against Monsanto in the federal court system, over failure to warn consumers and regulators that the glyphosate-based herbicide can cause non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.[13]
In 2018, Chhabria was the judge in the case of IMDb.com, Inc. v. Becerra, in which the website IMDb sued parties including California Attorney General Xavier Becerra and the Screen Actors Guild, seeking to counter a California law that barred IMDb from posting the birth dates of actors. Chhabria ruled that the California law was unconstitutional under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.[14]
In 2022, Chhabria presided over the sentencing of Jose Inez Garcia Zarate, an illegal alien who was acquitted of the 2015 shooting death of Kate Steinle in San Francisco but pleaded guilty to being a felon in possession of a firearm and a person illegally in the country in possession of a firearm. Chhabria sentenced Zarate, who had been in Federal prison for seven years, to time served. In sentencing Zarate, Chhabria warned, “If you return to this country again and you are back in front of me, I will not spare you. Let this be your last warning: do not return to this country.”[15]
In 2025, Chhabria ruled in a 40-page decision[16] that Meta's use of copyrighted books, by authors such as Junot Diaz, Ta-Nehisi Coates, David Henry Hwang, Laura Lippman, and Sarah Silverman, among others,[17] to train its AI model, LLama AI, was protected under the fair use doctrine in U.S. copyright law.[18][19]
See also
- List of Asian American jurists
- List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States (Seat 2)
References
- ^ "Senate Judiciary Committee Nomination Questionnaire" (PDF).
- ^ "Camille Chhabria". Legacy.com.
- ^ a b Lasnier, Guy (11 March 2014). "Senate confirms UCSC alumnus Vince Chhabria as U.S. District judge". UC Santa Cruz News. Retrieved 2024-06-13.
- ^ "Supreme Accomplishment: Alumni Trio to Clerk at Nation's Highest Court". Berkeley Law. 2019-02-14. Retrieved 2024-06-21.
- ^ a b "President Obama Nominates Six to Serve on the United States District Court". whitehouse.gov. 25 July 2013 – via National Archives.
- ^ a b Vince Chhabria at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a publication of the Federal Judicial Center.
- ^ "Results of Executive Business Meeting - January 16, 2014" (PDF). United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Retrieved October 26, 2022.
- ^ "On the Cloture Motion (Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Nomination of Vince Girdhari Chhabria, of California, to be U.S. District Judge)". Washington, D.C.: United States Senate. March 5, 2014. Retrieved October 26, 2022.
- ^ "On the Nomination (Confirmation Vince Girdhari Chhabria, of California, to be U.S. District Judge)". Washington, D.C.: United States Senate. March 5, 2014. Retrieved October 26, 2022.
- ^ Egelko, Bob (6 March 2014). "Deputy S.F. attorney Vince Chhabria confirmed as U.S. judge". SFGate. Retrieved 12 June 2024.
- ^ IANS. "Vince Chhabria to be first Indian-American judge in California". Deccan Herald. Retrieved 2024-06-13.
- ^ "Vince Chhabria to be first Indian-American judge in California". Business Standard. 6 March 2014. Retrieved 12 June 2024.
- ^ Eriq (October 3, 2016). "U.S. JPML Transfer Order In Re: Roundup Product Liability Litigation" (PDF).
- ^ Gardner, Eriq (February 20, 2018). "California's IMDb Age Censorship Law Declared Unconstitutional". The Hollywood Reporter.
- ^ "Illegal immigrant sentenced to time served in Kate Steinle killing". The Washington Times.
- ^ https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.415175/gov.uscourts.cand.415175.598.0_1.pdf [bare URL PDF]
- ^ "Sarah Silverman and acclaimed authors fight Meta's bid to dismiss their AI lawsuit".
- ^ Shibu, Sherin (26 June 2025). "Meta Wins AI Copyright Case over Sarah Silverman, Junot Diaz | Entrepreneur". Entrepreneur.
- ^ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdtBgB7iS8c | title=Piracy is for Trillion Dollar Companies | Fair Use, Copyright Law, & Meta AI | [bare URL]
External links
- 1969 births
- Living people
- American jurists of Indian descent
- Judges of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California
- Law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States
- Lawyers from San Francisco
- People associated with Covington & Burling
- People from Corte Madera, California
- Tamalpais High School alumni
- UC Berkeley School of Law alumni
- United States district court judges appointed by Barack Obama
- University of California, Santa Cruz alumni
- American people of Sindhi descent
- American people of French-Canadian descent
