Justice Sonia Sotomayor reportedly has no plans to retire from the United States Supreme Court ahead of Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Sotomayor, who recently turned 70 years-old, has faced pressure from several liberal activists who say she ought to step down and allow Democrats to fill her seat with a younger successor before a second Trump administration takes control in January.
Following the 2024 presidential election results, several liberal activists have argued that the justice, who recently turned 70 years old, ought to step down and allow Democrats to fill her seat with a younger successor before a second Trump administration takes control in January.
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The day after Election Day, David Dayen, the executive editor of the left-leaning American Prospect magazine took to social media with a message for the senior-most member of the court’s liberal minority: “This would probably be a good day for Sotomayor to retire.”
Mehdi Hasan, a former MSNBC host also seized on post-Trump victory social media shock by reposting an April op-ed in the Guardian in which he pointed to Sotomayor’s Type 1 diabetes, and suggested she retire.
While much of the retirement discourse has originated from the activist community, Politico reported that members of the Senate are also engaging in similar conversations.
Those close to Sotomayor, however, say that these liberal voices should instead focus rallying support for other means of protecting the Constitution.
“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 close to the justice told the Wall Street Journal.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) voiced similar criticism of Democrats urging Sotomayor to retire. “I don’t think it’s sensible,” he said on NBC News Sunday.
Driving the calls for retirement, is the memory of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death which allowed Trump to secure a conservative majority in the Supreme Court during his first term. Ginsburg, who died at 87 years-old, had long dismissed pressure from the left to step down during Barack Obama’s second term. Her death led to the appointment of Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
In 2021, shortly after Democrats recaptured the White House and the Senate, liberals once again leaned on an aging left-leaning justice pressuring Justice Stephen Breyer step down. The 83 year-old jurist retired in 2022, and was replaced by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Sotomayor, however, is more than a decade Ginsburg and Breyers' junior. Appointed in 2009, she is the Supreme Court’s first Hispanic justice and is one of the most prominent and publicly active members of the legal community. According to a Marquette Law School poll, while many Americans were unfamiliar with the high court’s justices, Sotomayor was viewed more favorably than any others on the bench.
