Top Democrats Hope Sotomayor Learns Lesson From Ginsburg's Death: Report

Top Senate Democrats shied away from joining the calls for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor to retire while their party has the opportunity to choose her replacement, according to a Wednesday report by NBC News. But with memory of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death still fresh, the debate appears far from over.

Ginsburg had resisted calls to step down while she could be replaced with another liberal by President Barack Obama. When she died in 2020, President Donald Trump worked with Republicans to ram a conservative replacement through the approval process, giving the court its current 6-3 rightward lean.

Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) — who sit on the Senate’s powerful Judiciary Committee — all declined to say that Sotomayor should retire when asked by NBC News.

Blumenthal, however, offered some advice to the justice.

“I’m very respectful of Justice Sotomayor. I have great admiration for her. But I think she really has to weigh the competing factors,” he told the outlet. “We should learn a lesson. And it’s not like there’s any mystery here about what the lesson should be.”

Whitehouse told NBC News that a 7-2 conservative-liberal balance would make for a “full MAGA court.”

Sotomayor, who turns 70 years old in June, has been one of the court’s most consistent liberal voices over her nearly 15 years on the bench. Yet a small but growing number of progressive political commentators worry about the consequences for American civil liberties if she should suddenly need to be replaced in the coming years, given how the 2024 elections could put Trump in the White House once more and hand Republicans control of the Senate.

Appearing Tuesday on CNN, political