Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor has no plans to retire, according to those close to her, despite a number of Democrats calling for her to stand down.
Liberal pundits have asked the 70-year-old jurist to stand down and allow President Joe Biden to replace her with a younger liberal before Donald Trump’s inauguration in January.
Their strategy supposes that Sotomayor might not survive Trump’s second term, which would allow him to select a fourth justice for the Supreme Court. But one person close to Sotomayor told the Wall Street Journal that the justice has no plans to step down.
‘This is no time to lose her important voice on the court. She just turned 70 and takes better care of herself than anyone I know,’ the source said.
Over fears of history repeating itself – as in the 2020 death of liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, 87, while on the bench during Trump’s first term – liberals have been asking for Sotomayor to stand aside and have even suggested Kamala Harris as her successor.
David Dayen, executive editor of the liberal magazine American Prospect, said on the day after the election: ‘This would probably be a good day for Sotomayor to retire’.
MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan also reposted an op-ed he wrote in April suggesting time was up for Sotomayor.
At the time he said: ‘Why take the risk? You have a Democratic president and a Democratic Senate, and you have a justice who is about to turn 70.’
Hasan shared his article again on social media on Wednesday. ‘I happen to think this piece of mine aged (sadly!) pretty well,’ he wrote.
Miranda Yaver, a political scientist at the University of Pittsburgh, said: ‘Sotomayor should retire tomorrow and let the lame duck Senate confirm her replacement.’
CNN analyst Bakari Sellers even proposed the idea of replacing Sotomayor with Vice President Kamala Harris, after she loss to Trump.
‘You have a hell of a vice president right there who has a legal pedigree to sit on a Supreme Court,’ he said on CNN on Friday morning. ‘And let Republicans go crazy, ape, I’m even mentioning that option.’
Anchor John Berman reacted to the idea with amazement, questioning whether it was even possible given it can take months to get a Supreme Court nominee through the confirmation process and even then Republicans could provide enough of a stumbling block over the next two-plus months before Trump takes over.
‘Not only am I floating it, but I want to stir up everything. I want people’s heads to explode this morning,’ Sellers said.
Typically, presidents choose respected judicial minds for the Supreme Court, not politicians.
Choosing a sitting vice president for the Supreme Court would be a historically unprecedented event.
The theory that Harris could end up in the Supreme Court had also previously been floated by a former Trump aide in July.
Richard Grenell, who served as the Director of National Intelligence under Trump, posted on X predicting an ‘open convention fight for President’ with the High Court seat serving as either a carrot or consolation prize for Harris.
The 57-year-old said: ‘If [Harris] doesn’t cut it then Justice Sotomayor will be forced to resign to make way for Kamala and then an open convention fight for President.’
Like Sotomayor, Ginsberg resisted calls from Democrats to step aside and let President Obama and the Democrats appoint someone younger.
However, Sotomayor, aside from living with Type I diabetes, has no known illness while Ginsberg had been battling cancer and was significantly older.
The death of Ginsburg allowed then-president Trump to cement a 6-3 conservative majority with the appointment of Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
Conservative justices including Clarence Thomas, 76, and Samuel Alito, 74, could also retire during Trump’s second term, allowing him to put an even more permanent stamp on the makeup of the Supreme Court by nominating younger replacements.