Richard Fred Suhrheinrich
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The Honorable Richard Fred Suhrheinrich (born 1936) is a 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 J.D. 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. Currently, Judge Suhrheinrich is a professor at the Thomas M. Cooley Law School teaching Moot Court or Appellate Advocacy 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[1], 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.
