Kenneth Michael Hoyt (born March 2, 1948) is a
senior
Senior (shortened as Sr.) means "the elder" in Latin and is often used as a suffix for the elder of two or more people in the same family with the same given name, usually a parent or grandparent. It may also refer to:
* Senior (name), a surname ...
United States district judge of the
United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas.
Education and career
Hoyt was born in
San Augustine County, Texas. He received an
Artium Baccalaureus
Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...
degree from
Texas Southern University in 1969 and a
Juris Doctor
The Juris Doctor (J.D. or JD), also known as Doctor of Jurisprudence (J.D., JD, D.Jur., or DJur), is a graduate-entry professional degree in law
and one of several Doctor of Law degrees. The J.D. is the standard degree obtained to practice law ...
from the
Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University in 1972. He was in private practice in
Houston, Texas from 1972 to 1985. He was a city attorney of
Kendleton, Texas from 1975 to 1981, and then of
Prairie View, Texas. Hoyt served as a presiding judge of the 125th Civil District Court of Texas from 1981 to 1982. At the same time, Hoyt was a member of the faculty of the
South Texas College Trial Advocacy Program, and from 1983 to 1984, he was an adjunct professor at the
Thurgood Marshall School of Law. He was a justice of the First District Court of Appeals of Texas from 1985 to 1988.
Federal judicial service
On November 24, 1987, Hoyt was nominated by President
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...
to a seat on the
United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas vacated by Judge
Carl Olaf Bue Jr.
Carl Olaf Bue Jr. (March 27, 1922 – December 24, 2020) was a United States federal judge, United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas.
Education and career
Born in Chicago, Illinois, Bue ...
Hoyt was confirmed by the
United States Senate on March 31, 1988, and received his commission on April 1, 1988. Hoyt was the second African American federal judge in the state of Texas. He took
senior status on March 2, 2013.
In March 2019, Hoyt found that a board member's rights under the
First Amendment to the United States Constitution had not been violated when he was
censured by the rest of the board. That judgment was reversed by the
United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit before the circuit itself was reversed by the unanimous
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
in ''
Houston Community College System v. Wilson'' (2022).
See also
*
List of African-American federal judges
*
List of African-American jurists
References
Sources
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hoyt, Kenneth Michael
1948 births
Living people
Texas Southern University alumni
South Texas College people
Texas Southern University faculty
Texas state court judges
African-American judges
Judges of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas
United States district court judges appointed by Ronald Reagan
20th-century American judges
Thurgood Marshall School of Law alumni
People from San Augustine County, Texas
People from Fort Bend County, Texas
People from Prairie View, Texas
21st-century American judges