Justice anthony kennedy family tree

Anthony Kennedy

US Supreme Court justice from to

This article is about the associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Anthony McLeod Kennedy - Genealogy - Geni.com: Family tree of Anthony KENNEDY. Lawyer, judge. Born Anthony McLeod KENNEDY. American lawyer and jurist, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Born on July 23, in Sacramento, California, United States (88 years).

For the 19th-century Joined States senator, see Anthony Kennedy (Maryland politician).

"Justice Kennedy" redirects here. For other uses, see Justice Kennedy (disambiguation).

Anthony McLeod Kennedy (born July 23, ) is an American attorney and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from until his retirement in He was nominated to the court in by President Ronald Reagan, and sworn in on February 18, After the retirement of Sandra Day O'Connor in , he was considered the swing vote on many of the Roberts Court's 5–4 decisions.

Born in Sacramento, California, Kennedy took over his father's legal practice in Sacramento after graduating from Stanford University and Harvard Law College. Kennedy became a U.S. federal judge in when President Gerald Ford appointed him to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

In November , after two failed attempts at nominating a successor to Associate Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr., President Reagan nominated Kennedy to the Supreme Court. Kennedy won unanimous confirmation from the United States Senate in February Following the death of Antonin Scalia in February , Kennedy became the senior associate justice of the court; he remained the senior associate justice until his July retirement.

Kennedy retired during the presidency of Donald Trump and was succeeded by his former law clerk, Brett Kavanaugh. Following O'Connor's death in , Kennedy is the oldest living former Supreme Court justice.

Kennedy authored the majority opinion in several important cases—including Boumediene v.

Bush, Citizens Together v. FEC, and four major gay rights cases: Romer v. Evans, Lawrence v. Texas, United States v. Windsor, and Obergefell v. Hodges. He also co-authored the controlling opinion in Planned Parenthood v.

Casey along with Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and David Souter.

Early life and education

Kennedy was born and raised in a Catholic family in Sacramento, California.^[1] His ancestry was mainly Irish, with some Scottish, German, and English ancestry as well.^[2] He was the son of Anthony J.

Kennedy (–), an attorney with a reputation for influence in the California State Legislature, and Gladys (née McLeod; –), who participated in many local civic activities.^[3] As a boy, Kennedy came into contact with prominent politicians of the day, such as California Governor and future Chief Justice of the United StatesEarl Warren.

As a young man, Kennedy served as a page in the California State Senate. Kennedy attended C. K. McClatchy Tall School, where he was an honors student and graduated in ^[4]^[5]

Following in his mother's footsteps, Kennedy enrolled at Stanford University where he developed an interest in constitutional law.

After spending his senior year at the London School of Economics, Kennedy graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford in with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science.^[6] Kennedy then attended Harvard Law School, graduating in with a Bachelor of Laws, cum laude.^[7]

Early career

Kennedy was in personal practice in San Francisco from to In , following his father's death, he took over his father's Sacramento practice, which he operated until ^[4] From to , he was a professor of constitutional law at McGeorge School of Law, at the University of the Pacific.^[6]

During Kennedy's time as a California law professor and attorney, he helped California Governor Ronald Reagan draft a state tax proposal.^[4]

Kennedy served as a private first class in the California Army National Guard from to during the Cold War.

He was on the board of the Federal Judicial Center from to He also served on two committees of the Judicial Conference of the United States: the Advisory Panel on Financial Disclosure Reports and Judicial Activities (subsequently renamed the Advisory Committee on Codes of Conduct) from to , and the Committee on Pacific Territories from to , which he chaired from to ^[8]

U.S.

Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

On March 3, , upon Reagan's recommendation,^[4]PresidentGerald Ford nominated Kennedy to the seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that had been vacated by Charles Merton Merrill.

Kennedy was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate on March 20 and received his commission on March 24, ^[9]

Supreme Court of the United States

Nomination and confirmation

In July , President Ronald Reagan nominatedRobert Bork to the Supreme Court seat vacated by Lewis F.

Powell Jr., who had announced his retirement in late June.^[10] However, he was rejected 42–58 by the Senate on October ^[11] The president's next nominee, Douglas Ginsburg,^[12]^[13] withdrew his name from consideration on November 7 after admitting to marijuana use,^[14] and Senate Judiciary Committee member Patrick Leahy said that if Reagan's next nominee was unacceptable to Senate Democrats,^[a] they would refuse hearings for any candidate until after the presidential election.^[16]

On November 11, , Reagan nominated Anthony Kennedy to fill Powell's seat.

Kennedy was then subjected to an unprecedentedly thorough investigation of his background,^[17] which did not uncover any information that would hinder his nomination.

In a Ninth Circuit dissent that Kennedy wrote before joining the Supreme Court, he criticized police for bribing a child into showing them where the child's mother hid drugs.

Considering such conduct offensive and destructive of the family, Kennedy wrote that "indifference to personal liberty is but the precursor of the state's hostility to it."^[18] Kennedy wrote an article the year before, however, about judicial restraint, and the accompanying excerpt from it was study aloud by Jeffrey Levi, executive director of the National Lgbtq+ & Lesbian Taskforce, at his confirmation hearing:

One can conclude that certain essential, or fundamental, rights should exist in any just society.
Birth of Anthony Kennedy, Associate Justice of the U Genealogy for Anthony J. "Bud" Kennedy ( - ) family tree on Geni, with over million profiles of ancestors and living relatives.
It does not follow that each of those essential rights is one that we as judges can enforce under the written Constitution. The Due Process Clause is not a guarantee of every right that should inhere in an ideal system. Many dispute that a just society grants a right to engage in homosexual conduct.

If that view is accepted, the Bowers conclusion in effect says the Mention of Georgia has the right to make a wrong decision—wrong in the sense that it violates some people's views of rights in a just population. We can extend that slightly to say that Georgia's right to be wrong in matters not specifically controlled by the Constitution is a necessary component of its own political processes.

Its citizens have the political liberty to direct the governmental process to make decisions that might be wrong in the ideal sense, subject to correction in the ordinary political process.^[19]

Kennedy said about Griswold v.

Connecticut, a privacy case about the use of contraceptives, "I really think I would like to draw the line and not talk about the Griswold case so far as its reasoning or its result."^[20] He also discussed "a zone of liberty, a zone of protection, a line that's drawn where the individual can tell the Government, 'Beyond this line you may not go.'"^[21]^[22]

His hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee began on December 14,^[23]^[24] and lasted just three consecutive days.^[25] When the Senate voted on Kennedy's nomination, he received bipartisan support.

At least one Kennedy family member served in federal elective office fromwhen P. Kennedy's grandson John F. Kennedy became a member of Congress from Massachusettsuntilwhen Patrick J. Kennedy II John's nephew retired as a member of the U.

Maureen Hoch of PBS wrote that he "virtually sailed through the confirmation process and was widely viewed by conservatives and liberals alike as balanced and fair".^[26] The U.S. Senate confirmed him on February 3, , by a vote of 97 to 0; he is the most recent Supreme Court justice to be confirmed by a unanimous vote.^[22] Absent from the vote were three Democrats: Paul Simon and Al Gore were campaigning and Joe Biden was ill.^[27] Attorney General Edwin Meese presented Kennedy's commission to the court in a swearing-in ceremony on February 18, ^[28]

Tenure and analysis

Although appointed by a Republican president, Kennedy was not easily pigeonholed ideologically; he had a reputation for looking at cases individually instead of deciding them on the basis of a rigid ideology.^[4]Vanity Fair quoted several former Supreme Court clerks as indicating that they believe Kennedy was often swayed by the opinions of his clerks, including his ruling on Planned Parenthood v.

Casey.^[29] One clerk derisively stated that "the premise is that he can't think by himself, and that he can be manipulated by someone in his second year of law school". This notion also led the Federalist World to target Kennedy with more conservative clerks, believing this would make Kennedy more conservative.

Two of his former clerks, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, eventually became Supreme Court justices. Conservative pundit George Will and Georgetown University Law Center professor Randy Barnett have described Kennedy's jurisprudence as "libertarian",^[30] although other legal scholars have disagreed.^[31]^[32]

Kennedy issued conservative rulings during most of his tenure, having voted with William Rehnquist as often as any other justice from to the end of the Rehnquist Court in ^[33] In his first term on the Court, Kennedy voted with Rehnquist 92 percent of the time—more than any other justice.^[34] Before becoming the median justice on the court in , Kennedy sided with conservatives during close rulings 75 percent of the time.^[35] However, Kennedy was also known for siding with the court's liberal justices on high-profile social issues like same-sex marriage and abortion.^[36] Kennedy was known as a swing vote on the court,^[37]^[38]^[39]^[40] and this reputation became more pronounced after the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (who had previously been known as the court's primary swing vote).^[41] Kennedy, who was slightly more conservative than former Justice O'Connor was on issues of race, religion, and abortion, intensely disliked being labeled a "swing vote" in public.^[42] However, interviews with former clerks indicate that, behind the scenes, he relished his role as the deciding vote, to the point that some of them expressed a conviction that he would pretend to waver on votes when he had, in fact, already made up his mind.^[29]

On the Roberts Court, Kennedy often decided the outcome of cases.

In the – term, he was in the majority 92 percent of the time. In the 23 decisions in which the justices split 5–4, Kennedy was in the majority in all but five. Of those 23 decisions, 16 were strictly along ideological lines, and Kennedy joined the conservative wing of the court 11 times; the liberals, five.^[43] In the – term, 16 cases were decided by a 5–4 vote; Kennedy joined the majority in 14 of the decisions.^[37]

Following the death of Antonin Scalia in February , Kennedy became the Senior Associate Justice of the court and the last appointed by President Reagan; he remained the Senior Associate Justice until his retirement.^[44] Kennedy retired from the Supreme Court and made the transition to senior status effective July 31, ^[45]

He has the distinction of being the only Supreme Court Justice to have two former clerks of his be appointed to the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

Conservative criticism

According to legal reporter Jan Crawford, Kennedy attracted the ire of conservatives when he did not vote with his more conservative colleagues.^[46] In , the U.S.

House Majority Leader at the time, Tom DeLay, criticized Kennedy for his reliance on international law and for conducting his own Internet research, calling him a judicial activist.^[47] According to legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, some conservatives viewed Kennedy's pro-gay-rights and pro-choice rulings as betrayals.^[48] According to Crawford, the "bitter" quality of some movement conservatives' views on Kennedy stems from his eventual rethinking of positions on abortion, religion, and the death penalty (which Kennedy believes cannot be constitutionally applied to juveniles or intellectually disabled people).^[46]

A short law review article by retired lawyer Douglas M.

Parker in The Green Bag^[49] charged that much of the criticism of Kennedy was based upon "pop psychology" rather than meticulous analysis of his opinions. Kennedy himself responds to concerns about judicial activism this way: "An activist court is a court that makes a decision you don't like."^[50]

Internationalism

According to The Fresh Yorker staff writer Jeffrey Toobin, starting in , Kennedy became a leading proponent of the use of foreign and international law as an aid to interpreting the United States Constitution.^[48] Toobin sees this consideration of foreign law as the biggest factor behind Kennedy's occasional breaking with his most conservative colleagues.^[48] The use of foreign regulation in Supreme Court opinions dates back to at least , though according to Toobin, its use in interpreting the Constitution on "basic questions of individual liberties" began only in the late s.^[48]

Defending his use of international law, in Kennedy told Toobin, "Why should world view care that the American Administration wants to bring freedom to oppressed peoples?

Is that not because there's some underlying ordinary mutual interest, some underlying usual shared idea, some underlying frequent shared aspiration, underlying unified principle of what human dignity means? I think that's what we're trying to tell the lie down of the world, anyway."^[48]

A profile of Kennedy in the Los Angeles Times focused on his internationalist perspective.

According to David Savage, Kennedy had become a strong proponent of interpreting the guarantees of liberty and equality in line with modern human rights law: "lawyers and judges have come to believe the basic principles of human rights are common to the peoples of world [sic]."^[51]

Jurisprudence

Abortion

In Hodgson v.

Minnesota, U.S. (), Kennedy voted to uphold a restriction on abortion for minors that required both parents to be notified about the procedure.

Kennedy co-authored the plurality opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (), which reaffirmed in principle (though without many details) the Roe v.

Wade decision recognizing the right to abortion under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The plurality opinion, signed jointly by three justices appointed by Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, ignited a firestorm of criticism from conservatives.

Kennedy had stated at least as early as that, in order to uphold precedent, he might not vote to overturn Roe.^[52] According to Court insiders, Kennedy had reportedly considered overturning Roe, but in the close decided to uphold restrictions while affirming the Roe precedent.^[53]

In later abortion decisions, it became visible that Kennedy thought Casey had narrowed Roe and allowed more restrictions.

Owing to the Court's altered composition under President Clinton, Kennedy was no longer the fifth vote to strike down abortion restrictions. Hence, O'Connor became the justice who defined the meaning of Casey in subsequent cases, while Kennedy was relegated to dissents in which he sought to explain what he thought Casey meant.

For example, Kennedy dissented in the choice in Stenberg v. Carhart, which struck down laws criminalizing partial-birth abortion.^[54]

After the judicial appointments made by President George W. Bush, Kennedy again became the needed fifth vote to strike down abortion restrictions.^{[neutrality is disputed]} Since Kennedy's conception of abortion rights was narrower than O'Connor's, the court became slightly more supportive of abortion restrictions after Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in Gonzales v.

Carhart, U.S. (), which held that a federal commandment criminalizing partial-birth abortion did not violate Casey because it did not impose an "undue burden" upon the exercise of abortion rights. The decision did not expressly overrule Stenberg, although many commentators saw it as having that effect.^[55]^[56]

First amendment rights of contractors

O'Hare Truck Service, Inc.

was a towing company employed under contract by the City of Northlake in northern Illinois.

Anthony McLeod Kennedy (born July 23, ) is an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, having been appointed by President Ronald Reagan in Since the retirement of Sandra Morning O'Connor, Kennedy has often been the "swing vote" on many of the Court's 5–4 decisions.

Northlake removed O'Hare from its list on towing companies because the company's owner did not support Northlake's mayoral candidate in his reelection campaign: instead, the owner supported an opposition candidate. The Supreme Court held, in a majority 7–2 opinion written by Kennedy (O'Hare Truck Service, Inc.

v. City of Northlake), that independent contractors such as O'Hare are entitled to the same First Amendment protections as those afforded to government employees. Accordingly, Northlake could not ground the towing company's employment on its political affiliations or values unless the city could illustrate that their political affiliations "had a reasonable and appreciable outcome on its job performance".

The Court held that Northlake neither attempted nor would it contain been able to make such a demonstration. Therefore, Northlake's removal of O'Hare Truck Service from its employment list was unconstitutional.^[57]

Free speech

On May 30, , Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in Garcetti v.

Anthony McLeod Kennedy, born on July 23,is an American attorney and jurist who served as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from until his retirement in He was nominated to the court in by President Ronald Reagan and sworn in on February 18, Kennedy administration. Kennedy was an American businessman and a supporter of libertarian individual freedoms.

Ceballos relating to whether the First Amendment protects statements by general officials pursuant to their duties from employer discipline.^[58] Kennedy utilized past precedents in Pickering v. Board of Education to decide whether or not an employee spoke as a citizen on a matter of public worry or in the capacity of his office.^[59] Upon the identification that speech was said in an official capacity, Kennedy determined that a government entity, in its role as an employer, had the discretion to impose speech restrictions so long as they had the potential to affect its operations.^[60] Kennedy emphasized this point by writing: "when public employees make statements pursuant to their official duties, the employees are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate their communications from employer discipline".^[61]

On June 28, , Kennedy wrote the plurality opinion in United States v.

Alvarez declaring the Stolen Valor Act unconstitutional.^[62] In doing so, Kennedy determined the Act supported a content-based restriction on speech - that being a nondefamatory falsehood of having received a military decoration or medal - and that the government failed to provide a direct causal link between the restriction and a potential injury.^[63] Additionally, Kennedy wrote that such a restriction failed to meet the standards of strict scrutiny, with the law acting to "[seek] to control and suppress all false statements on this one subject in almost limitless times and settings".^[64]^[65]

On June 19, , Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in Packingham v.

North Carolina ruling that a prohibition of sex offenders from social media is a violation of the First Amendment.^[66] Kennedy noted that, while the restriction was tailored to suit a government interest in preventing youngster sex abuse, the law did not pass strict scrutiny nor was it narrowly tailored for that purpose.^[67]^[68]^[69] The barring of a substantial amount of online expression was therefore unrelated to its stated goal and acted "to foreclose access to social media altogether [and] to block the user from engaging in the legitimate exercise of First Amendment rights".^[70]^[71]

Capital punishment

With the Court's majority in Atkins v.

Virginia and Roper v. Simmons, Kennedy agreed that the execution of the mentally ill and those under 18 at the period of the crime was unconstitutional. In Kansas v. Marsh, however, he declined to join the dissent, which questioned the overall "soundness" of the existing capital punishment system.

In , Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in Kennedy v. Louisiana. The perspective, joined by the court's four more liberal justices, held, "[t]he Eighth Amendment bars Louisiana from imposing the death penalty for the rape of a youngster where the crime did not result, and was not intended to result, in the victim's death." The opinion went on to state that "there is a distinction between intentional first-degree murder on the one hand and nonhomicide crimes against individual persons, even including child rape, on the other.

The latter crimes may be devastating in their harm, as here, but in 'terms of moral depravity and of the injury to the person and to the public'&#; they cannot be compared to murder in their 'severity and irrevocability'."^[72] The opinion concluded that in cases of crimes against individuals, "the death penalty should not be expanded to instances where the victim's animation was not taken".^[73]

Environment

Kennedy wrote the majority decision in Coeur Alaska, Inc.

v. Southeast Alaska Conservation Council (), which involved an Alaskan mining company that planned to extract new gold from a mine that had been closed for decades using a technique known as "froth-flotation". This technique would produce approximately &#;million tons of "slurry", a plump waste product laced with toxic elements such as lead and mercury.

The company intended to dispose of the waste in a nearby lake, which would eventually decrease the depth of the lake by fifty feet and flood the surrounding area with contaminated water. While federal law forbids "[t]he use of any river, lake, stream or ocean as a waste treatment system", Kennedy's decision stated that pollutants are exempt from this law so long as they have "the effect of modifying the bottom elevation of water".

Justice Ginsburg's dissent stated that such a reading of federal law "strains credulity" because it allows "[w]hole categories of standardized industries" to "gain immunity from a variety of pollution-control standards".

Gay rights and homosexuality

Kennedy's framework of liberty has included protections for sexual orientation.

While Kennedy was an appeals-court judge, he wrote a decision in Beller v. Middendorf (9th Cir. ) that noted that some lgbtq+ behavior may be constitutionally protected – yet upheld the military's policy of discharging service members on the basis of homosexuality.^[74] He later wrote the Supreme Court's opinion in Romer v.

Evans (), invalidating a provision in the Colorado Constitution excluding homosexuals from any state or local anti-discrimination protections. He wrote the Court's opinion in Lawrence v. Texas (), which invalidated criminal laws against homosexual sodomy on the basis of the Due Process Clause of the United States Constitution, overturning the Court's previous ruling in Bowers v.

Hardwick (). In both cases, he sided with the more liberal members of the Court. He wrote that the Court had misread the historical record regarding laws criminalizing lesbian relations in Bowers, stating that further research showed that American anti-sodomy laws had historically been directed at "nonprocreative sexual outing more generally", rather than specifically at homosexual acts.

Combined with the fact that such laws had often gone unenforced, the Court saw this as constituting a tradition of avoiding interference with private sexual activity between consenting adults. He also said that the reasoning behind Bowers was not widely accepted in American law (pointing, for example, to the Model Penal Code's recommendations starting in ) and that it had been rejected by most other developed Western countries (as in the Wolfenden Report of and a judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in Case /76, Dudgeon v United Kingdom).

As a result, Kennedy stated that there was a jurisprudential basis for thinking that "an integral part of human freedom" is allowing consenting adults to opt to privately engage in sexual activity.^[75]^[76]

In the case of Boy Scouts of America v.

Dale, Kennedy voted, with four other justices, to uphold the Teen Scouts of America's organizational right to ban homosexuals from existence scoutmasters.^[77]

On October 19, , Kennedy temporarily blocked Washington state officials from releasing the names of people who signed petitions calling for a referendum ballot measure that would repeal a same-sex attracted rights domestic partnership law, but joined the subsequent majority choice in Doe v.

Reed, which stated the Washington law permitting signature release was constitutional, but remanded the matter to the lower court to determine whether the release of this particular petition's signatures was constitutional.

In Christian Legal Society v.

Martinez (), the Court held that a public law college's policy requiring that all student organizations allow any student to participate was constitutional. The Christian Legal Society wanted an exemption from the policy because the company barred students based on religion and sexual orientation.

Hastings College of Law refused to grant the exemption. The court initiate that Hastings' policy was justified and viewpoint neutral. Kennedy wrote a concurrence joining the majority.

On June 26, , Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act was held unconstitutional in United States v.

Windsor. In the majority opinion on this case, Kennedy wrote, "The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity.

By seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriages less respected than others, the federal statute is in violation of the Fifth Amendment."^[78]

Two years later, Kennedy authored the majority ruling in the choice of Obergefell v.

Hodges, which holds that same-sex couples must be allowed to marry nationwide.^[79]^[80] The closing paragraph of Kennedy's ruling has been used by many couples in their marriage vows:^[81]

No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of devote, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice and family.

In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were.

Gun issues

On June 26, , Kennedy connected the majority in District of Columbia v. Heller, which struck down the ban on handguns in the District of Columbia.

At issue was whether Washington, D.C.'s ban violated the right to "keep and bear arms" by preventing individuals from having guns in their homes. Kennedy sided with the conservatives on the Court, holding that the Second Amendment recognized an individual's right to keep and bear arms.

Two years later, in McDonald v.

The Kennedy family is one of the most authoritative political families in the United States, having produced a president, three senators, three ambassadors, and multiple politicians and human rights activists. Caroline Bouvier Kennedy is an author, attorney, and diplomat, and the only surviving of the former President and First Lady. There she met Edwin Schlossberg with whom she got married in She is the co-author of two books on civil liberties.

Chicago, Kennedy joined the majority opinion holding that the Second Amendment's protections for the right to store and bear arms are incorporated against the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.^[82]

Habeas corpus

On June 12, , Kennedy wrote the 5–4 majority opinion in Boumediene v.

Bush. The case challenged the legality of Lakhdar Boumediene's detention at the Guantanamo Bay military base as well as the constitutionality of the Military Commissions Act (MCA) of Kennedy was joined by the four more liberal justices in finding that the constitutionally guaranteed right of habeas corpus applies to persons held in Guantanamo Bay and to persons designated as opponent combatants on that territory.

They also found that the Detainee Treatment Act of failed to provide an adequate substitute for habeas corpus and that the MCA was an unconstitutional suspension of that right.^[83]^[84]^[85]^[86]

The court also concluded that the detainees are not required to exhaust review procedures in the court of appeals before seeking habeas relief in the district court.

In the ruling, Kennedy called the Combatant Status Review Tribunals "inadequate".^[83]^[84]^[85]^[86] He explained, "to hold that the political branches may switch the constitution on or off at will would lead to a regime in which they, not this court, 'say what the law is'".^[87] The conclusion struck down section seven of the MCA but left intact the Detainee Treatment Act.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Souter stressed the fact that the prisoners involved had been imprisoned for as long as six years.^[88]

Religious liberty

On issues of religion, Kennedy held to a less separationist reading of the Establishment Clause than did his colleague, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor,^{[citation needed]} favoring a "Coercion Test" that he detailed in County of Allegheny v.

ACLU.^[89] Kennedy authored the majority opinion in Town of Greece v. Galloway, U.S. (), concluding, "The town of Greece does not violate the First Amendment by opening its meetings with prayer that comports with our tradition, and does not coerce participation by nonadherents."^[90]