When Barack Obama appointed Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court of the United States, the Left lauded the move and celebrated the extra diversity joining the High Court.
Justice Sotomayor has been a reliable and consistent vote for Democrats and leftist causes ever since.
But now Justice Sotomayor was just figuratively stabbed in the back by the last people she expected to be wielding the knife.
Is Justice Sonia Sotomayor too old for SCOTUS?
The Supreme Court of the United States currently has six justices appointed by Republican presidents and three justices appointed by Democrat presidents.
George H.W. Bush nominated Justice Clarence Thomas, George W. Bush appointed Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito.
Donald Trump appointed three Justices during his four years in the White House – Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.
All of the GOP-picked Justices, with the exceptions of Thomas and Alito, have ruled with their left-wing counterparts on major cases at various times.
However, Barack Obama’s appointments, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, along with Joe Biden’s pick of Ketanji Brown Jackson, have consistently ruled together and in-line with Democrat Party wishes.
But despite her loyalty, there’s a new trend in left-wing Big Media calling for Sonia Sotomayor to call it quits early.
New trend pushes Justice Sotomayor to retire
Back in January, Politico first reported about some anonymous, high-profile Democrats strategizing about an early Sotomayor retirement.
More recently, creator of the newsletter and podcast, Very Serious, Josh Barro wrote a Substack post calling for Justice Sotomayor to hurry up and retire for what he admits are political reasons.
This week, The Atlantic published a portion of the post urging Sotomayor to hang up her robe and gavel.
And the next day, MSN picked up on the trend as well.
The effort isn’t catching on because of any right-wing rulings from Sotomayor – even if radical leftists remain upset about the High Court’s unanimous ruling that states can’t remove former President Donald Trump from ballots.
And it’s not because Sotomayor has spoken positively of conservative Justice Clarence Thomas in the past – even if extreme activists continue to try and remove Thomas from the bench.
The motives are far simpler.
Barro and the others pushing the trend want to make sure the 70-year-old Sotomayor isn’t replaced by a nominee appointed and confirmed by a potential Republican President and Senate, which could be the case after November.
Left wants Biden to replace Sotomayor, not Trump
“If she (Justice Sotomayor) retires this year, President Joe Biden will nominate a young and reliably liberal judge to replace her,” Barro wrote. “Republicans do not control the Senate floor. . .Confirmation of the new justice will be a slam dunk, and liberals will have successfully shored up one of their seats on the Court—playing the kind of defense that is smart and prudent when your only hope of controlling the Court again relies on both the timing of the death or retirement of conservative judges and not losing your grip on the three seats you already hold.”
Barro worries that if a red wave comes this November, Sotomayor may need to stay on the court to a very ripe age – or, worse yet from his perspective, a Republican, perhaps even Trump, may hand-pick her replacement.
“If Sotomayor doesn’t retire this year, she’ll be making a bet that she will remain fit to serve until possibly age 78 or even 82 or 84,” Barro continued. “And she’ll be forcing the whole Democratic Party to make that high-stakes bet with her.”
Barro doesn’t like the bet, morbidly citing the fact that Sotomayor has diabetes and has traveled with a medic in the past.
He doesn’t want to see a repeat of what he believes led to Trump’s successful bid to get Coney Barrett on the bench after Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away – what he laments as “her unfortunate choice” of “staying on the bench far into old age.”
Political Animal News will keep you up-to-date on any new developments in this ongoing story.