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Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor ignores pressure to retire – reports

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Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor ignores pressure to retire – reports

image source, Getty Images

caption, Relatives of the 70-year-old judge say he is in “very good health”

  • Writer, Sam Cabral
  • Role, BBC News, Washington

Sources close to Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor have rejected suggestions to allow someone else to replace her, while warning against hasty appointments of judges before Donald Trump takes office.

Justice Sotomayor, 70, is the third-oldest judge on the nine-member panel and has long publicly acknowledged that she lives with type 1 diabetes.

Trump’s looming return to the White House is galvanizing anxious Democrats who want Trump to resign so that President Joe Biden can have the opportunity to nominate a younger candidate to replace him.

But sources tell US media that Justice Sotomayor is not planning to go anywhere.

“This is not the time to lose his important voice on the court,” one person told the Wall Street Journal, adding that he “takes better care of himself than anyone I know.”

“He is in excellent health and the court needs him more than ever,” reads a quote provided to CNN. Sources also told ABC News he has no plans to resign.

The BBC has been contacted for comment.

Sen. Bernie Sanders told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday that he had heard “some” talk about Justice Sotomayor being asked to step aside, but that calls for her resignation did not “make sense.”

None of the elected Democrats in Washington have called on him to leave office for life.

The Puerto Rican jurist, the first black woman to serve on the court, maintains a busy public schedule and is a persistent questioner during oral argument sessions.

But many liberals across the country remember that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in 2020 during Trump’s first term.

Justice Ginsburg, known to her fans as “RBG,” has died at the age of 87 following complications from pancreatic cancer.

His death and the resulting vacancy on the court just 46 days before the presidential election sparked a political firestorm and gave Trump a third lifetime appointment to the highest court in the United States.

Trump appointed Judge Amy Coney Barrett, which shifted the court to a six-to-three conservative majority.

The conservative-leaning court has made major decisions that are being felt across the U.S. in 2022, from repealing abortion rights nationwide to how cities deal with homelessness.

As Trump prepares to take over from Biden in January, some Democrats and liberal activists have called for Judge Sotomayor to retire as a precaution.

His defenders dismissed the call as ageist and argued that his health was well managed.

We are just over two months away from Trump’s inauguration, leaving little time for Biden to nominate and the Senate to confirm a new justice.

“Democrats want to attack the Justices while Republicans fight over who will lead the new Senate majority,” the Republican president-elect said in a social media post Sunday.

Trump may have more opportunities to shape the Supreme Court.

Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are 76 and 74 years old, respectively.

If the Republican chooses to replace both, he would be the first president since Franklin D. Roosevelt to appoint a majority of the court’s justices.

Trump also reshaped the lower courts in his first term, working with Senate Republicans to name 234 federal judges over the course of four years.

Biden has the opportunity to appoint Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer in 2022.

Justice Jackson made history by becoming the first black woman to sit on the top court, but she did not change its partisan makeup, given that both she and Justice Breyer are liberals.

This July, Biden proposed term limits and an ethics code for judges; The idea is unlikely to go anywhere with Republicans back in charge of the White House and at least one chamber of Congress.

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