Some liberal journalists as well as law professors have started to publicly pressure Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor to retire, so that President Biden could appoint a younger justice under a Democratic Senate.
Journalist Josh Barro, who floated the idea in late January, said he was surprised Sotomayor hasn’t already announced retirement plans after she expressed concern over the political make-up of the court.
Barro broached the topic again in his newsletter published Saturday headlined, “Keep the Pressure on Sotomayor to retire.”
“The best thing Sotomayor can do to secure her legacy and increase the likelihood that liberals can gain ground on the court in the future is to retire after 15 years of service, enabling Biden to appoint a younger, liberal judge to replace her and serve for decades to come,” he wrote.
Former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan echoed Barro’s concerns and called on Sotomayor to step down in a column in the Guardian published in early April. Despite his praise for the liberal justice, Hasan said Democrats were risking the future of democracy by not pubically calling for her retirement.
“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 RBG, and to not take any kind of gamble with the future of our democracy,” he wrote, referring to the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died in 2020 and was replaced on the court by Trump nominee Amy Coney Barrett.
Hasan spoke to CNN’s Jake Tapper about it as well, and admitted he had “PTSD” from 2020.
“I think the Democrats didn‘t learn lessons. Look, what are we talking about, abortion rights. How did that happen? Dobbs [v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization], how did the Florida decision happen today? [Florida Gov. Ron] DeSantis appointed five of the seven judges. Republicans are very good at stacking courts and getting their people on courts and thinking strategically about filling courts. Democrats aren’t very good at seeing the power of the Supreme Court,” Hasan told the other CNN panelists.
