According to NBC News and CNN, Associate Justice Stephen Breyer is leaving the Supreme Court.
The 83-year-old liberal-leaning justice’s retirement would smooth the way for President Joe Biden to name a successor, and it comes amid growing demand from progressives to have him step down while the Senate is still controlled by Democrats. Biden has already stated that he will nominate the first Black woman to the Supreme Court of the United States.
Breyer, a California native, former President Bill Clinton’s appointee, and the court’s oldest member, has been on the bench for nearly 27 years.
Since Biden’s election, leftists have stepped up calls for Breyer to step down in order for the president to pick his replacement and prevent Republicans from strengthening the court’s 6-3 conservative majority.
Progressives escalated their pressure on Breyer to resign after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said last year that if Republicans retake control of the upper chamber after the 2022 midterm elections, he will reject a potential Biden Supreme Court nominee in 2024 and possibly even 2023.
Breyer, for one, had been tight-lipped about his retirement plans. He underlined the significance of maintaining the federal judiciary’s independence from politics in April, telling a Harvard Law School audience that judges are “loyal to the rule of law, not to the political party that helped obtain their appointment.”
When asked what he has learned from his nearly three-decade stint on the court during a virtual event organized by Philadelphia’s National Constitution Center in May, Breyer said he found he has “less power to influence people than I thought I might.” Breyer, on the other hand, described serving as a “privilege.”
Despite this, during last year’s term on the bench, Breyer was the most senior member of the court’s liberal wing. He penned majority decisions in a number of high-profile cases, including one that maintained the Affordable Care Act and another that sided with a former high school cheerleader who was disciplined for a profane tirade on social media.