Jan. 26, 2022, 4:14 p.m. ETJan. 26, 2022, 4:14 p.m. ET
Adam Liptak
Justice Leondra R. Kluger served as an acting deputy solicitor general in the Obama administration, presenting 12 arguments before the Supreme Court on behalf of the federal government.
Justice Leondra R. Kluger of the California Supreme Court has many of the qualifications typical of nominees for vacancies on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Like four of the current justices, she graduated from Yale Law School. Like six of the justices, she served as a law clerk on the Supreme Court, for former Justice John Paul Stevens.
And she is well known at the court, having served as an acting deputy solicitor general in the Obama administration, presenting 12 arguments on behalf of the federal government.
She is anomalous in at least one way, in that she serves on a state court. Eight of the current justices served on federal appeals courts before being named to the Supreme Court. The ninth, Justice Elena Kagan, had no prior judicial service, though she had been dean of Harvard Law School and solicitor general.
The last justice elevated directly from a state court was Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, in 1981.
Justice Kruger is 45, which is on the younger side for a Supreme Court nominee. With one exception — Justice Clarence Thomas, who was 43 — all of the current justices were older when they were nominated.
Justice Kruger grew up in the Los Angeles area, the daughter of two doctors. She went to high school in Pasadena before attending Harvard. After law school, where she was the first Black woman to serve as editor in chief of The Yale Law Journal, she worked at prominent law firms and in the Justice Department.
As acting deputy solicitor general, she argued for a narrow interpretation of the “ministerial exception” to employment discrimination laws, saying that the court’s analysis should be essentially the same whether the employer accused of discrimination was a private business or a church.
The Supreme Court unanimously rejected her position. “We cannot accept the remarkable view that the religion clauses have nothing to say about a religious organization’s freedom to select its own ministers,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote.
In 2014, Gov. Jerry Brown of California, a Democrat, named Justice Kruger to the State Supreme Court. Legal analysts have called her cautious and deliberate, a characterization she has embraced.
“My approach reflects the fact that we operate in a system of precedent,” Justice Kruger told The Los Angeles Times in 2018. “I aim to perform my job in a way that enhances the predictability and stability of the law and public confidence and trust in the work of the courts.”
Source: nytimes.com
