The Supreme Court, in a "per curiam" opinion, ruled that the Florida Supreme Court's decision, calling for a statewide recount, violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This ruling was by a 7–2 vote, though per curiam opinions are usually issued only for unanimous votes. Kennedy has since been identified as the primary author of the opinion. In addition to writing the opinion, Kennedy also decided to include Souter, Breyer and Stevens in the majority without consulting them, initially intending the "per curiam" opinion to have the vote count listed as 8–1 for the Equal Protections Clause issue (though not the remedy), rather than 7–2. Stevens demanded his name be removed from the majority, which Kennedy agreed to only after Stevens pulled his name from Breyer's dissent. Breyer also objected in private, but he was left as part of the majority. Later interviews by "Vanity Fair" indicated that Breyer and Souter were trying to appeal to Kennedy to join them on the remedy, rather than actually agreeing that an equal protection violation had occurred. Jack Balkin, writing in Yale Law Journal, considered this to be a cheap trick to construct the illusion of a larger majority, likening it to "saying that two doctors agree that a patient is sick, but one wants to use leeches, and the other wants to prescribe antibiotics".