Stephen Breyer To Retire: Who Will Biden Pick To Replace The SCOTUS Judge?
Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer will announce his retirement, according to reports. A liberal judge appointed by Bill Clinton, Breyer has served on the Supreme Court since 1994.
Questions immediately surfaced as to who President Joe Biden will appoint to serve with only two other liberal judges. The vacancy comes after Donald Trump appointed three judges in four years.
Democrats will try to approve Biden's Supreme Court nominee before November, as polls suggest that Democrats may lose both the House and Senate in the next election. Biden’s pick is expected to put a younger justice into the role, but it would not alter the conservative hold on the Supreme Court. That gap sits at six conservative justices and three liberals.
Biden had promised to pick the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court. One judge who has been mentioned is 51-year-old Ketanji Brown Jackson. She clerked for Breyer in 1999 and was reportedly a possible nominee during the Obama administration. Jackson serves as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Also mentioned were Michelle Childs of the South Carolina District Court, Wilhelmina Wright of Minnesota’s Federal District Court, Candace Rae Jackson-Akiwumi of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Leondra Kruger of the California Supreme Court, Eunice Lee of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and Sherrilyn Ifill, who announced plans to step down as president and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. All are Black women.
Trump appointed conservative Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett to fill the vacancy left after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Conservatives Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh were also confirmed to the Supreme Court during the Trump administration.
The White House has yet to comment about reports of Breyer's retirement.
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