Hispanic Lawmakers Resist Calls on Justice Sotomayor to Retire

Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus are preemptively coming to Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s defense, pushing back on the argument that she should step aside to ensure President Joe Biden has the chance to name her successor.

In a social media post from her campaign account, Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández (D-N.M.) said Sotomayor will step aside from the US Supreme Court when she chooses.

“Justice Sotomayor’s decision to retire will be made as a wise Latina, in conversation with her doctor, her family, and her faith, without the interference of politicians who have no idea about her health condition,” she wrote in a Sunday post on X, the site formerly known as Twitter.

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) also came to Sotomayor’s defense.

“Justice Sotomayor has been a trailblazer for the Latino community and has every right to serve on the Supreme Court until she makes the decision that it is best for her to retire,” he said in an April 5 post on X.

Sotomayor is the court’s first Latina justice and while she isn’t facing the kind of mounting public pressure to step aside some of her former colleagues experienced, one legal advocacy group said it’s a conversation progressives are having.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus released a statement that signals it isn’t joining in on those discussions.

“Justice Sonia Sotomayor is the first, and still only, Latina to sit on the United States Supreme Court and has proven to be a brilliant jurist, tough questioner, and fair arbiter of the rule of law throughout her tenure on the Court,” the statement said. “She has played a part in some of the most impactful rulings in recent American jurisprudence, many of which have protected or expanded critical rights and programs that progressive lawmakers and advocates have fought for and celebrated. We look forward to her continued service on the Court.”

Molly Coleman, executive director of the progressive People’s Parity Project, told Bloomberg Law in March that people want to avoid a repeat of what happened with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who resisted calls to retire under Barack Obama. Her death at 87 from pancreatic cancer before the 2020 election paved the way for Donald Trump to cement a 6-3 conservative majority on the court.

But Coleman acknowledged calling for the court’s first woman of color to retire is a delicate situation that has some concerned about appearing disrespectful to a justice who, at 69, isn’t the oldest on the bench.

Sotomayor raised eyebrows in January when she told an audience at the University of California, Berkeley Law that she’s “tired” and working harder than she expected at almost 70.

A few weeks later, the advocacy group Fix the Court released a trove of documents it obtained from the US Marshals Service that showed she has at times traveled with a “medic” in recent years. Though Sotomayor has been candid about health, writing in her memoir “My Beloved World” of living with Type 1 diabetes and her efforts to quit a heavy smoking habit.

The Supreme Court’s press office hasn’t given any indication that the justice is suffering from any health conditions beyond what she’s spoken of publicly. The court didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.