By NAN STAFF WRITER
News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Mon. Jan. 31, 2022: A Black judge who could be President Joe Biden’s choice to replace Justice Stephen Breyer on the U.S. Supreme Court, has roots in the Caribbean.
Leondra Kruger, California’s Supreme Court Justice and Deputy Assistant United States Attorney General, is one of the top three candidates Biden is reportedly considering for the seat after Breyer announced he plans to retire at the end of the Court’s current term.
If chosen, Kruger would make history by becoming the first Black woman and the youngest to serve on the Supreme Court as well as the first with roots in the Caribbean.
Her mother, Audrey Y. Reid, immigrated to the US from Jamaica while her late father had roots in Europe and was of Jewish descent. Dr. Reid is a board-certified pediatrician. She earned her medical degree from Howard University College of Medicine in Washington, DC. She completed her internship at the Medical Center at Elizabeth Place in Ohio and a residency at the Children’s Hospital of Michigan. She also completed a fellowship at the LA County-USC Medical Center in Los Angeles.
Reid Kruger, 45, was born in 1976 in Glendale, California, and grew up in South Pasadena. She attended the private day school, Polytechnic School, in Pasadena, before earning a BA, magna cum laude, from Harvard University.
In high school, she displayed an interest in journalism and was the editor of her school’s newspaper. She wrote for the Harvard University daily student newspaper, the Crimson, during her time there, and after graduating from Harvard, attended Yale Law School, where she earned her Juris Doctor degree. While at Yale, she was the editor of the Yale Law Journal.
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Kruger is married to Brian Hauck, a partner at Jenner & Block in San Francisco. The couple have two children.
There have been only two Black Supreme Court Justices to date, and both of them were men. Clarence Thomas was appointed in 1991 and still sits on the Court. Thurgood Marshal retired in 1991 and died in 1993.
