Liberal Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, 70, is not planning to step down from the bench to allow President Joe Biden to replace her with someone younger, sources close to her have said.
Left-wing pundits have begun calling for Sotomayor, who was nominated to the Supreme Court in 2009 by then-President Barack Obama, to resign since former President Donald Trump was reelected last week.
“This would probably be a good day for Sotomayor to retire,” David Dayen, executive editor of progressive magazine American Prospect, posted the day after the race was called for Trump:
MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan reposted an April op-ed he wrote for the Guardian, saying Sotomayor should resign “for the sake of all of us”:
“Sadly this piece of mine from April (!) has aged pretty well, actually,” he captioned his X post.
CNN’s Bakari Sellers went so far as to suggest replacing Sotomayor with losing candidate Vice President Kamala Harris:
“You have a hell of a vice president right there who has a legal pedigree to sit on a Supreme Court,” Sellers remarked during a Friday morning appearance on the network, adding that he wants to make Republicans “go crazy.”
Despite the widespread calls for her resignation, a source close to Sotomayor told the Wall Street Journal over the weekend that “this is no time to lose her important voice on the court.”
“She just turned 70 and takes better care of herself than anyone I know,” the source claimed.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) also told NBC’s Kristen Welker that Sotomayor should not step down, though he acknowledged that he has heard a “little bit” of talk about the subject:
“Justices don’t take well to being pressured to give up their lifetime appointments,” Breitbart News senior legal contributor Ken Klukowski observed.
“It’s hilarious that leftists are suggesting Kamala Harris should replace Sotomayor on the Supreme Court,” Klukowski continued. “‘Wow, Harris is a legal genius!’ is something nobody said ever.”
