Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer is retiring, NBC and CNN reported Wednesday.
Breyer, a nominee of former President Bill Clinton and moderate liberal judge, has been on the Supreme Court since 1994. At 83, he is the oldest justice on the nation’s highest court. Because of his age, liberal activists began pushing for him to retire this year so that President Joe Biden could nominate a younger liberal justice to the lifetime position.
They hope his retirement will help Democrats avoid what happened with the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She declined to retire while Barack Obama was president and then died in the final weeks of former President Donald Trump’s term, allowing him to place a third conservative justice on the bench and reshape the politics of the court for years, likely decades, to come.
Biden also has the benefit of a slim Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate, which will vote on the confirmation of any of his nominees.
Recent opinions Breyer authored include the ruling on June Medical Services v. Russo, which struck down a Louisiana law requiring any doctor who performed abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital, and the ruling in County of Maui v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund, which affirmed the reach of the Clean Water Act.
In a rare interview in 2020, Breyer told the American Bar Association he was confident in the country’s ability to make progress on issues of racism.
“We have had many ups and downs in this country,” he said. “We did have slavery, we did have a civil war, we did have a legal system of segregation … but somehow we do overcome them.”
If Biden makes good on his promise, Breyer’s replacement will be a Black woman ― a demographic that has never before been represented on the Supreme Court. If confirmed, she will be only the sixth woman and third Black justice to serve in the position.
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, a federal district judge in D.C. whom Biden nominated to serve on the D.C. Circuit federal court of appeals, is among those who have emerged as a potential front-runner for the role, as that appeals court has been a launching pad for many other Supreme Court justices.