While there has been urgent speculation in liberal legal circles and talk among Democratic senators of calling for Justice Sonia Sotomayor to resign, top liberal justice sources told ABC News that she is not expected to step down in the middle of her term. The results of the 2024 election.
Sotomayor, 70, is in good health and a vigorous participant in the court’s work. He is below the average retirement age of 75, and continues to manage his childhood diabetes well.
Justices are appointed for life and have generally been fed up with public pressure campaigns to remove them. Among other things, bowing to public pressure could further politicize the court’s image and would likely be a major concern, several court analysts said.
Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, at the Zarzuela Palace, on March 4, 2024, in Madrid.
Pablo Cuadra/Getty Images, FILE
Sotomayor, the first Latina to sit on the Supreme Court bench, has established herself as the main counterweight to the conservative majority and has made it clear she has a lot of fight left.
Speaking at Harvard in May, Sotomayor, who was nominated to the court by then-President Barack Obama, said that while “all the losses traumatize me in my stomach and heart,” she chooses to “keep fighting.”
“There are times when I’m very, very sad,” he said at Harvard. “And there are moments, yes, I also feel disappointment. We all do it. But you have to own it. You have to accept it. You have to shed tears, and then you have to clean up and get up and fight some more.’
Still, many Democrats are reeling from the late 2020 death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the age of 87 from liver cancer, giving then-President Donald Trump the chance to nominate his third justice to the high court. Ginsburg had been in poor health for years and missed an opportunity to retire early and have Obama nominate her replacement.
Deporting Sotomayor, assuming she agreed to go, could be politically risky, and a successful confirmation before Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2025, logistically impossible. These realities seem to be sinking in among some key democratic actors.
On NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Sen. Bernie Sanders said he “doesn’t think it’s a reasonable approach” when asked if he thought Democrats should pressure Sotomayor to step down.
