Biden Says Black Woman Will Replace ‘Exemplary’ Breyer on Court
Breyer Announces Retirement, Handing Biden Supreme Court Vacancy
(Bloomberg) -- President Joe Biden said Thursday he would fulfill his promise to nominate the first Black woman on the U.S. Supreme Court after applauding retiring Justice Stephen Breyer.
Biden said he would announce his choice by the end of February after reviewing candidates and their records. He said he has made no decisions.
“I will select a nominee worthy of Justice Breyer’s legacy of excellence and decency,” he said. “The person I will nominate will be someone with extraordinary qualifications, character, experience and integrity. And that person will be the first Black woman ever nominated to United States Supreme Court.”
In remarks at the White House, Biden said Breyer “has been an exemplary justice.” Breyer has shown a “clear-eyed commitment to making the country’s laws work for its people.”
Breyer, 83, told Biden in a letter Thursday he will retire in June or July assuming a successor has been confirmed. At the White House, he thanked the president for his remarks and said he found himself thinking of the American experiment as he prepares to depart the court.
“It’s a kind of miracle when you sit there and see all those people in front of you, people that are so different in what they think, and yet, they’ve decided to help solve their major differences under law,” he said.
When his students “get too cynical,” he said, “I say: ‘Go look at what happens in countries that don’t do that.’”
Political Challenge
The vacancy on the court presents both an opportunity and a political challenge for Biden, who will need to get his nominee confirmed by a Senate that Democrats control only because of Vice President Kamala Harris’s tie-breaking vote.
Breyer’s successor could serve for decades but isn’t likely to shift the ideological balance on a court with a 6-3 conservative majority. The court’s oldest justice, Breyer is a pragmatist and consensus-builder who typically sides with the liberal wing in divisive cases.
Biden previously promised to nominate the first Black woman to the court. Leading candidates include U.S. Circuit Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, 51, whom Biden successfully appointed to the powerful federal appeals court in Washington; U.S. District Judge Michelle Childs, 55, whose nomination to the same appeals court is now pending in the Senate; and California Supreme Court Justice Leondra Kruger, 45.
The Supreme Court is in the middle of what could be a transformational term. The court’s conservative majority is considering overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion-rights ruling, establishing a constitutional right to carry a handgun in public and slashing the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to fight climate change. In the term that starts in October, the court will consider abolishing race-conscious college admissions.
Barrett Timeline
As long as they stick together, Senate Democrats can confirm Biden’s nominee without any Republican support. While moderate Democrats Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have thwarted Biden on his economic agenda and voting rights, they have supported the president’s judicial picks.
Manchin said in a radio interview on Thursday that he could vote for a nominee more ideologically liberal than himself.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer wants to move Biden’s nominee through the Senate about as rapidly as Republicans confirmed Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who was seated just before the 2020 election, according to a person familiar with his thinking. The Senate confirmed Barrett 30 days after former President Donald Trump nominated her.
“We want to move quickly,” Schumer said Wednesday. “We want to get this done as soon as possible.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell led a 2016 Republican blockade of Obama nominee Merrick Garland, but isn’t likely to be able to do that again given that Democrats now control the chamber and Republicans abolished the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees in 2017.
Liberal activists had called on Breyer, a 1994 appointee of President Bill Clinton, to retire while Democrats control the White House and Senate. Over the past five years, Republicans have used their political muscle to fill three Supreme Court seats -- and tip the court’s balance.
Many liberals were disappointed that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg didn’t retire during Obama’s presidency. Her death during Trump’s presidency gave him the opportunity to shift the ideological balance of the court firmly to the right by appointing Barrett.
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