Sandra Segal Ikuta (born June 24, 1954) is a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Background Ikuta was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. She completed an Artium Baccalaureus degree at the University of California, Berkeley in 1976, having previously attended Stanford University for two years. Ikuta received a Master of Science degree in journalism from Columbia University in 1978. From 1978 to 1985 she was a writer and editor for many magazines and organizations which include Guilford Press, City National Bank, Unique Publications, and Disney Channel Magazine. Ikuta then attended the UCLA School of Law, where she was an editor of the UCLA Law Review. She graduated in 1988 with a Juris Doctor degree and Order of the Coif honors. Ikuta clerked for Ninth Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski from 1988 to 1989 and for United States Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor from 1989 to 1990. She became an associate of the law firm O’Melveny & Myers in 1990 and went on to become a partner in 1997. At the time of her nomination, Ikuta had been general counsel of the California Resources Agency since January 2004, "trying to protect natural resources and open space and preserve agricultural land." She is a former alternate director of the Pacific Forest and Watershed Lands Stewardship Council. Federal judicial service Ikuta was nominated to the Ninth Circuit by President George W. Bush on February 8, 2006, to fill the seat vacated by Judge James R. Browning, who assumed senior status in 2000. Previously, Carolyn Kuhl had been nominated to that position, but she had been filibustered by Senate Democrats for a year until December 2004 when she withdrew her nomination. Ikuta worked alongside her former boss, Judge Alex Kozinski, for whom she clerked. He testified on her behalf at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on her nomination. Ikuta was voted unanimously out of the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 26, 2006, and the U.S. Senate confirmed her nomination on June 19, 2006 by a 81–0 vote. She was the sixth judge appointed by Bush to the Ninth Circuit. She received her commission on June 23, 2006. Notable cases Ikuta's first published opinion on the Ninth Circuit was United States v. Baldrich, issued on December 27, 2006. She wrote the Dukes v. Wal-Mart dissent in the Ninth Circuit, with reasoning that largely ended