Kevin Newsom’s impressive tenure as solicitor general of Alabama made him an obvious choice for President Trump to appoint to the Eleventh Circuit, where Judge Newsom now sits. Just a few months after his appointment, Judge Newsom made it onto President Trump’s Supreme Court shortlist. Judge Newsom cares deeply about getting cases right. He demonstrated as much in a recent Establishment Clause case about a 34-foot Latin cross in the City of Pensacola’s Bayview Park. In Kondrat’yev v. City of Pensacola , decided in February of this year, Judge Newsom not only authored the court’s decision, but also issued a separate concurring opinion of his own (joined by another judge on the panel) to point out a glaring issue with the precedent he was bound to apply in the decision. Plaintiffs challenged the presence of the Bayview Park cross in Pensacola — which has stood for over 75 years — on Establishment Clause grounds. They argued that the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which provides that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” barred the city’s maintenance of the cross. Judge Newsom parsed the Supreme Court’s recent decision in American Legion v. American Humanist Association to answer […]
