OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Despite pressure from some liberal activists urging Justice Sonia Sotomayor to step down so Democrats can fill her seat before political power shifts in January, sources close to the justice say she has no intention of retiring from the Supreme Court, a report published on Sunday said.
“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,” one person familiar with the justice and her thinking told The Wall Street Journal.
Sotomayor, appointed in 2009 by President Barack Obama, is the senior member of the court’s liberal minority, a position that traditionally makes her its leader. Outnumbered by six conservatives, including three appointed by Trump during his first term, the liberal justices have increasingly found themselves issuing dissenting opinions, arguing that the majority has made significant errors on issues ranging from abortion rights to presidential power.
Sotomayor, a bestselling author of both memoirs and children’s books, who has also appeared on “Sesame Street” and advocated for civics education, is one of the most well-known justices. In February, a Marquette Law School poll revealed that, while many Americans were unfamiliar with the Supreme Court’s members, Sotomayor enjoyed a higher favorability rating than any other justice, the WSJ reported.
“This would probably be a good day for Sotomayor to retire,” David Dayen, executive editor of the liberal American Prospect magazine, wrote the day after the election on social media.
On the same day, former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan, highlighting that Justice Sotomayor has had Type 1 diabetes since childhood, brought up his April op-ed in which he suggested it was time for her to step down.
The discussion surrounding Sotomayor—and the potential retirements of other conservative justices of a similar age—has been influenced by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at age 87. Ginsburg had resisted pressure from liberals to retire in the early 2010s when Obama and the Democrats held appointment power.
Her death in September 2020 paved the way for Trump to solidify the court’s conservative majority by appointing Justice Amy Coney Barrett just before Democrats took control of both the White House and the Senate.
Fears of further weakening the liberal minority led some on the left to pressure Justice Stephen Breyer to retire shortly after President Biden and Senate Democrats took control in 2021. One group even sent a billboard truck to Capitol Hill with the message, “Breyer, Retire.” He did step down in 2022 at age 83, allowing Biden to appoint Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson as his successor.
Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, was one of the first prominent legal progressives to urge Ginsburg to retire during the Obama presidency, publishing a March 2014 op-ed in the Los Angeles Times advocating for her to step down.
Chemerinsky told the WSJ on Saturday that the situation is different now.
“It is far more uncertain that the Democrats could confirm a successor than in summer 2014,” he said. “And Sotomayor is 70,” while Ginsburg was 81 when he urged her to retire.
Some conservatives, fully aware that political dynamics and health conditions can shift quickly, have suggested that the senior members of the court’s constitutional originalist wing, Justices Clarence Thomas, 76, and Samuel Alito, 74, may choose to retire before the 2026 midterm elections.
“Prediction: Justice Sam Alito is gleefully packing up his chambers,” Mike Davis, a conservative legal activist close to Trump, wrote on social media after Tuesday’s election.
Others find that kind of talk improper and out of line. Treating Thomas and Alito “like meat that has reached its expiration date is unwise, uninformed, and, frankly, just crass,” Leonard Leo, a leader of the Federalist Society and a former judicial adviser to Trump, told the WSJ on Friday. Neither justice has publicly indicated an interest in retirement.
