Democrats are increasingly calling on Justice Sonia Sotomayor to resign from the Supreme Court before the 2024 presidential election, suggesting a widespread belief that former President Donald Trump will win.
Sotomayor is 69, a lifelong diabetic, and the oldest liberal member of the court. Should Trump win the election and Sotomayor need to retire in the next four years due to her health, conservatives could secure a 7-2 majority.
Senator Richard Blumenthal recently expressed those fears. “I’m very respectful of Justice Sotomayor,” he told NBC. “I have great admiration for her. But I think she really has to weigh the competing factors. We should learn a lesson. And it’s not like there’s any mystery here about what the lesson should be. The old saying — graveyards are full of indispensable people, ourselves in this body included.”
Although many Democrats have publicly spoken out against Sotomayor’s retirement, sources indicate that most believe she should. “All the people in the liberal legal community are putting hurting Sonia’s feelings ahead of the prospect of a 7-2 court. Insane,” said one Democrat who worked on judicial nominations but is prohibited from speaking about the justices publicly. “So they don’t say anything about her retiring when they all think she should.”
Controversial former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan echoed these concerns in a column in The Guardian. “Biden, elected Democrats, and liberals and progressives across the board should be both publicly and privately encouraging Sotomayor to consider what she wants her legacy to be, to remember what happened with [Ruth Bader Ginsburg], and to not take any kind of gamble with the future of our democracy,” Hasan wrote.
Trump currently leads Biden in six of seven of the most crucial swing states, according to recent polling.