Some voices on the left are calling for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor to retire “for the sake of us all,” as one columnist, Mehdi Hasan, wrote at The Guardian. Hasan argues that the 69-year-old Sotomayor, appointed in 2009 under Democrat Barack Obama’s administration, should retire to safeguard the Supreme Court from her seat being filled by a “far-right conservative” under a Republican presidency. Hasan and the broader progressive left worry about a replay similar to what happened with Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s replacement by former President Donald Trump-appointed Amy Coney Barrett, leading to the Court’s 6-3 conservative majority.
Hasan highlights concern about Sonia Sotomayor’s age, as she will turn 70 in June, and her health issues, particularly that she has had type 1 diabetes since childhood, which required paramedics’ response to her home in 2018. Hasan says a “hard-right” 7-2 conservative majority would significantly harm minority rights, specifically women and Latinas. Hasan then points to previous pressure on Justice Stephen Breyer, nominated by former President Bill Clinton, to retire, deeming a specific retirement age as being beneficial to a kind of ideological public interest.
Of course, conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas are older than Sotomayor, but this isn’t about well-being, just ideology, per usual. That is the reason the senior liberal on the court cited to stay in her seat in a speech given at UC Berkeley earlier this year.
Sotomayor said,
I live in frustration. And as you heard, every loss truly traumatizes me in my stomach and in my heart. But I have to get up the next morning and keep on fighting.
Amid a flurry of op-eds and scholarly legal analysis calling for the Justice’s retirement, the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are taking a more muted approach.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) stopped short of calling for her retirement but issued a warning, saying,
I’m very respectful of Justice Sotomayor. I have great admiration for her. But I think she really has to weigh the competing factors. We should learn a lesson. And it’s not like there’s any mystery here about what the lesson should be. The old saying — graveyards are full of indispensable people, ourselves in this body included.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), while not explicitly calling for Sotomayor’s retirement, cautioned against empowering what he termed the “extremist wing.”
In an interview, Whitehouse said,
Run it to 7-2 and you go from a captured court to a full MAGA court. Certainly, I think if Justice Ginsburg had it to do over again, she might have rethought her confidence in her own health.
For now, the White House is taking a hands-off approach to the pressure campaign aimed at Sotomoher’s retirement and subsequent replacement.
On Wednesday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a press briefing,
When it comes to those types of decisions, those are personal decisions, regardless of if it’s Justice Sotomayor or any other justice on the bench. That is for them to make, that is a decision for that justice to make. Again, it’s a personal decision. That is not something that we get involved in, but it is something for, obviously, any justice on the bench. They should be given the space and freedom to make that decision.
While some commentators point to her recent remarks made on Berkeley’s campus about feeling “tired” and working harder than ever, there are no signals that Justice Sotomayor is planning on retiring in the near future.
