Senate Democrats are refusing to join the calls from some left-wing activists for Justice Sonia Sotomayor to retire while Joe Biden is still president, NBC News reported.
In recent weeks, leftwing commentators have urged the 69-year-old liberal justice not to make the same mistake as the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and step down from the high court while there is still a Democrat in the White House to nominate a successor.
In 2014, progressives begged Justice Ginsburg to retire while President Barack Obama was in still office but she defiantly remained until her death in September 2020, paving the way for then-President Trump to nominate Amy Coney Barrett and secure a 6-3 majority on the court.
Liberals, who have never forgiven Ginsburg for setting the stage for the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade and return the question of abortion to the states, have now set their sights on Sonia Sotomayor.
While Sotomayor is 18 years younger than Ginsburg was at the time of her death, some on the left argue that as the oldest serving liberal justice on the court, Sotomayor should bite the bullet and resign to allow the Democrat president to choose a younger liberal jurist to take her place.
However, Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have so far resisted the temptation to join the campaign to force the Latina justice out.
Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal told NBC News that while he admired Sotomayor, he believed she should “weigh the competing facts” and learn from Ginsburg’s mistake.
At the same time, Blumenthal refused to explicitly call for the justice to resign.
He noted that Sotomayor was “highly accomplished” and was still a “fully functioning justice.” Blumenthal told NBC News that each Supreme Court justice should make the decision about “their health” and “level of energy” while also balancing “the larger national and public interest” in ensuring that the Supreme Court “looks and thinks like America.”
