Richard Fred Suhrheinrich

Richard Suhrheinrich
Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
In office July 10, 1990 – August 15, 2001
Appointed by	George H. W. Bush
Preceded by	Albert J. Engel, Jr.
Succeeded by	David McKeague
Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan
In office October 4, 1984 – July 10, 1990
Appointed by	Ronald Reagan
Preceded by	R. James Harvey
Succeeded by	Nancy Garlock Edmunds
Personal details
Born	1936 (age 87–88) Lincoln City, Indiana, U.S.
Alma mater	Wayne State University Michigan State University University of Virginia

Richard Fred Suhrheinrich (born 1936) is a Senior judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit serving in Lansing, Michigan.

Born in Lincoln City, Indiana, Suhrheinrich earned his Bachelor of Science in 1960 from Wayne State University, his Juris Doctor with honors in 1963 from the Detroit College of Law and his LL.M. in 1990 from the University of Virginia School of Law. Suhrheinrich was an assistant prosecutor for Macomb County, Michigan in 1967 and was an associate professor of law at the Detroit College of Law from 1975 to 1985. Suhrheinrich co-founded, with Richard Kitch, the law firm Kitch & Suhrheinrich. The firm originally specialized in medical malpractice defense. Now the Kitch firm, the firm has since grown into a full-service law firm with seven offices throughout Michigan, Ohio, and Illinois. Currently, Judge Suhrheinrich is a Distinguished Jurist & Professor at the Western Michigan University Law School teaching various legal courses.

President Ronald Reagan appointed Suhrheinrich to a judgeship on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan in 1984. President George H. W. Bush appointed him to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1990. Suhrheinrich assumed senior status in 2001.

He made national news on December 22, 2005 as the opinion writer on ACLU v. Mercer County, where an appeals panel of the Sixth Circuit unanimously decided for the continued display of the Ten Commandments in a Kentucky courthouse. In his opinion, Judge Suhrheinrich stated that the United States Constitution does not demand "a wall of separation between church and state," denying a claim by the ACLU. In addition, he criticized the ACLU's "repeated references to the 'separation of church and state'", stating that "this extra-constitutional construct has grown tiresome." Judge Alice Batchelder joined in the opinion, while District Judge Walter Rice merely concurred in the decision but not the opinion.

External links

• Richard Fred Suhrheinrich at the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, a publication of the Federal Judicial Center.