Bernie Sanders said he opposes any move to force senior liberal U.S. Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor to resign so Joe Biden can nominate a younger liberal replacement before he ends his term as president.
The 70-year-old Sotomayor is known to be suffering from health problems, and some Democrats fear a repeat of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died during Donald Trump’s first term – giving him a third chance to appoint a new justice and further strengthen the Supreme Court’s conservative bias. .
In his first term, Trump appointed Neil Gorsuch to replace Antonin Scalia, Brett Kavanaugh to succeed Anthony Kennedy, and Amy Coney Barrett to take the place of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died less than two months before the 2020 election – leaving six largely conservative judges remained. only three liberals.
Trump’s first-term appointees on the court were crucial in overturning abortion rights and a series of other rulings that delighted conservative activists.
In an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, Sanders, a progressive senator who identifies as an independent but usually votes with Democrats, said it would not be “wise” to ask Sotomayor to resign while Biden is still in office .
He added that he had heard “a little bit” of talk from Democratic senators about asking Sotomayor, who has a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, to step aside.
“I don’t think it’s wise,” Sanders said, without elaborating.
No elected Democrat has yet publicly called for the judge to resign, but the idea comes amid a feverish effort by Democrats to “Trump-proof” their agenda before the Republican takes office in January.
Supreme Court justices are appointed by the sitting president but face an often grueling confirmation process in the Senate. With Democrats soon to lose control of the body, the opportunity for Biden to appoint a successor to Sotomayor — and for Democratic senators to confirm — is quickly slipping away, which would make Biden the first president since Jimmy Carter not to have a Justice appointee is confirmed. to the Supreme Court.
With just two months left in office, however, it is unlikely that Biden and a Democratic-controlled Senate would be able to appoint and confirm a new judge to the court in time.
Democrats have previously raised the possibility of expanding the number of justices to counter the court’s political makeup. In July, Biden proposed term limits and an ethics code for trial judges after a series of scandals involving conservatives Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito called their impartiality into question.
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Biden said the court “has struck down civil rights protections, taken away women’s right to choose and has now granted presidents broad immunity from prosecution for crimes committed while in office.”
In a second term, Trump could have a chance to further deepen the court’s conservative bent, as Thomas and Alito are both in their mid-70s.
Just as Democrats consider whether Sotomayor should resign to install a replacement liberal judge, Republicans could do the same after taking power in January. “Alito is happily packing up his chambers,” Mike Davis, a conservative legal scholar, predicted on social media this week.
Although a Republican majority in the Senate refused to hold confirmation hearings in 2016 when Barack Obama nominated Merrick Garland to replace Antonin Scalia, protesting that doing so would be unfair in an election year, they had no such problems when Trump nominated Barrett as his replacement. Ginsburg in 2020, also an election year.
