Edward M. Chen

Edward Milton Chen (born January 20, 1953) is a United States District Judge on the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.

Born and raised in Oakland, California, Chen earned a bachelor's degree in 1975 from the University of California, Berkeley and a law degree from Boalt Hall School of Law in 1979. After graduating law school, Chen served judicial clerkships for United States District Judge Charles Renfrew from June 1979 until April 1980 and United States Circuit Judge James R. Browning from June 1981 until June 1982.

From 1982 until 1985, Chen served as an associate at the San Francisco law firm of Coblentz, Cahen, McCabe & Breyer. In September 1985, Chen became a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, specializing in language discrimination cases. He held that post until April 2001, when the judges on the United States District Court for the Northern District of California named Chen to an eight-year term as a federal magistrate judge.

Chen served as a federal magistrate judge from 2001 until 2011.

On August 7, 2009, President Barack Obama nominated Chen to a seat on the United States District Court for the Northern District of California vacated by the resignation of Martin Jenkins.

On October 15, 2009, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 12-7 in a party-line vote to send Chen's nomination to the full Senate.

On December 24, 2009, the U.S. Senate returned Chen's nomination to the president. Senator Feinstein in an interview published in the San Francisco Chronicle on December 29, 2009 reiterated her support for Judge Chen and her hope that the President would renominate Judge Chen for the U.S. District Court. President Obama renominated Chen in January 2010, and the Senate Judiciary Committee approved his nomination on February 4, 2010. On August 5, 2010, the U.S. Senate again returned Chen's nomination for failure to confirm. President Obama renominated Chen to the seat on September 13, 2010 and again on January 5, 2011.

On May 10, 2011, the United States Senate confirmed Chen in a 56–42 vote. He received his judicial commission on May 12, 2011. Since being confirmed as a District Judge, Chen has been a prolific writer, authoring a number of major opinions. According to one legal news source, Judge Chen is the 4th most-influential district judge appointed since 2010. The same source later named Judge Chen one of the "7 Rising Star Judges You Want to Clerk For."Judge Chen's notable cases have included the civil trial regarding the shooting of Oscar Grant by a BART police office, the criminal prosecution of former Korn/Ferry executive David Nosal for hacking, and a number of cases being brought against Uber Technologies regarding the classification of its drivers as independent contractors.

The Los Angeles Times reported that Republicans had issues with the fact that judicial nominee Chen had previous connections to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), asserting based on a second instance that this appeared to be a thread running through Obama's nominations. The Washington Times asserted that judicial confirmation had become a traditional partisan political battle for control of the courts and predicted that Chen would be confirmed.

On June 21, 2012, the case of Carreon v. Inman et al, which has achieved some prominence on the Internet, was assigned to Judge Chen.